I’ve given the surname, Czech-style, as Supraphon does
but though born in Chudenice, West Bohemia, he is better known to us
as Reicha. He studied in Prague, first as a choirboy and then as a cellist,
being taught by Franz Joseph Werner, the city’s premier soloist. As
with so many Bohemian musicians he travelled widely becoming a cello
principal in Swabia where he joined a band full of fellow Czechs. He
later became Kapellmeister in Bonn and in 1785 succeeded to the directorship
of court music. Reicha died as he’d lived most of his life, abroad.
Panton’s well-produced CD, recorded in 1995, highlights
one of Reicha’s particular strengths, which was a fusion of ingratiating
melody and solid technical address. As a cello soloist himself he was
ideally placed to exploit contrasts of register and the potential for
colour; as a composer he was firmly in the Mannheim School where, once
again, he mixed with émigré Czechs, Stamitz and Richter
amongst them. The conjectural influence of Reicha on Beethoven has frequently
been noted but it’s incontestable that he was an influence on his own
talented nephew Antonin Reicha. There has been in fact, and probably
continues to be, confusion between the two men’s work and compositions
attributed to Josef may well have been written by Antonin.
The A Major Concerto has retained a tentative hold
on the repertoire. Emanuel Feuermann played it and an off-air recording
exists of his performance in 1940 but as with the slightly earlier concerto
of Matthias Georg Monn, which in a broad sense it stylistically resembles,
it’s remained ancillary to the literature and not become a canonical
part of it. Reicha was certainly aware of phrasal clarity and neatness
in his concertos; the pressures are not inconsiderable for the soloist
and Ericsson copes well, though not immaculately (his intonation comes
under strain occasionally). The string textures in the A Major play
against each other and then playfully together in the second movement;
there is a delicious soloistic compass here, from the lowest to the
highest positions with associated ranges of dynamics. The contrasts
of quiet playing are especially attractive as are Ericsson’s pliant
and soft lower two strings. It is the finale that most reminded me of
Monn – a sunshine burst of a noble and buoyantly tuneful Rondo.
Jana Vlachova, daughter of Josef Vlach, of whose famous
quartet she became subsequent leader joins her cellist husband in the
Double Concerto for Violin and Cello, which seems to have had an alternative
existence as a Double Violin Concerto, though the CD documentation is
silent on the compositions themselves. She begins a little nervously
in her unison exchanges with Ericsson but soon warms up as she launches
into dialogues and solo lines. Reicha is especially convincing at the
balance between unison and solo lines in the slow movement with the
two entwining over a moving bass line at a moderate tempo (a well sustained
Andante). The finale though is disappointingly generic with some solid,
if relatively uninspiring, cello lines with violin soaring on top; a
nice Mannheim throw away ending, though.
The D Major Cello Concerto is comprehensively less
exciting than its companion in A Major though still a gallant and high
spitited affair. The first movement is bright but rather overlong for
its thematic material and gives way to an Adagio in which Reicha exploits
his sure expertise in register writing. Once again, to the accompaniment
of chugging orchestral strings, the soloist spans both extremes of register.
There’s some difficult passagework here – and dangerously easy to lose
intonation. The effervescent Allegro finale ends the piece with considerable
dash – the Czech Chamber Orchestra under Ondrej Kukal accompany with
good shaping of lines and discreet musicianship. The stand out work
on the disc is the A Major Concerto but this issue is of real interest
– and not just to those preoccupied with the Classicists of the Bohemian
diaspora.
Jonathan Woolf
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Czech Chamber Orchestra/Ondrej
Kukal