I
have already
reviewed a live performance of this
symphony on Aura by Ančerl and
the CPO on tour in Ascona (Switzerland)
in 1959. I began by remarking that Ančerl’s
“New World” had taken some time
to make its mark. Dismissed by Edward
Greenfield as "rather a dull performance"
on a BBC Radio 3 "Building a Library"
programme in the mid-sixties (his favourite
was Giulini), not greatly favoured by
the Penguin Guide to Bargain Records
and never listed in EMG’s "The
Art of Record Buying", a new generation
of reviewers has seen it differently.
In a Gramophone "Collections"
feature (September 1999), Rob Cowan
gave it pride of place. My own reaction
to the Ascona performance was that it
was an excellent affair with plenty
of brio but with a certain plain-sailing
anonymity which failed to capture my
imagination as did another very
faithful performance recently come
in from the cold, that by Nikolai Malko
(particularly his earlier version with
the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra,
where the slow movement is quite miraculous).
I
also asked the question, when reviewing
the first of these Karel Ančerl
Gold Editions to come my way (violin
concertos by Mendelssohn, Bruch and
Berg with Josef Suk) whether Ančerl,
fine musician that he was, was quite
a great conductor in the
way Furtwängler or Toscanini were.
Well, I think I can
now say that he had at least one quality
of greatness; the capacity to renew
himself, to probe into familiar scores
and interpret them as though newly discovered.
Put on paper the following statistics
do not seem to amount to much, but they
at least hint at what had happened between
1959 and 1961:
|
|
I
|
II
|
III
|
IV
|
tt
|
| Ascona 1959 |
08:48 |
10:27 |
07:34 |
10:27 |
37:16 |
| Studio 1961 |
09:06 |
11:29 |
07:48 |
11:13 |
39:36 |
A difference of 02:20
over a whole symphony may
seem slight, yet the whole conception
has changed. In 1959 it was a swift,
basically conventional performance,
a touch influenced by Toscanini, perhaps.
In 1961 Ančerl had all the time
in the world to unfold a performance
in which every detail of the score
is made to tell, every little note in
the accompaniment has a life of its
own and, while remaining completely
faithful to the score, every theme has
its own character. Listen to the folk-like
simplicity of the famous Largo theme,
a simplicity which does not exclude
either deep feeling or affection (Sample
1: Track 2 from the beginning), or the
lilting dance of the Scherzo’s central
section, with lovely clarinet gurgles
just before the reprise (Sample 2: Track
3 from 03:05), or the piquant quality
of the clarinet theme in the Finale
(Sample 3: Track 4 from 01:54) at a
tempo which allows relaxation without
losing the forward movement which has
been built up.
So
what had happened in those two years?
It is perhaps difficult for us to realise
it when Dvořák’s last symphony
is carted in and out of the studios
almost weekly in the western world and
already was so by 1961 (Ančerl
himself had recorded it in the 1950s
with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra for
Fontana), but to record the “New World”
in Czechoslovakia in 1961 was
an extraordinary responsibility for
an artist. The Supraphon policy was
not to flood the market with alternative
versions, or to award each new Music
Director of the Czech Philharmonic with
a new cycle (Vacláv Neumann was
the first to get this privilege, but
by then concepts were changing), they
made one version that was expected to
stay. After the war the great Vacláv
Talich was allowed to re-record the
"New World" and to give his
thoughts on no. 8, but not to return
to nos. 6 and 7, which he had recorded
on 78s. These, together with no. 5,
were entrusted to Karel Šejna, another
wonderful musician. There was some diffidence
in those days as to whether the first
four symphonies were to be considered
at all (younger readers may not even
know that the "New World"
used to be called no. 5) and they were
farmed out to the Prague Symphony Orchestra
– with the implication that they were
not worth the great Czech Philharmonic’s
bother – under two young conductors
who were to be Supraphon stalwarts for
many years
to come: Vacláv Neumann (nos. 1, 2 and
4) and Vacláv Smetáček (no. 3),
and so the Dvořák cycle for the
1950s was complete. When a recording
was needed for broadcasting it was invariably
one of these, so the Talich “New World”
enjoyed iconic status.
However, with the advent of stereo it
was time for renewal and once again
the policy of sharing out the goodies
was maintained. Chalabala got the symphonic
poems and a couple of operas, Ančerl
got the overtures and the most glittering
prize of all, the new "New
World". Later he also made a new
6th Symphony, while the 7th
went to Zdeněk Kosler and the rest
had to wait for Neumann in the grey
years following the Russian invasion
in 1968. As can be seen, Ančerl
rose to the occasion, and the Ascona
performance shows just how much
work he put into it, work which he was
happily able to translate into results
of captivating spontaneity.
Dvořák’s
three overtures “In Nature’s Realm”,
“Carnival” and “Othello” were intended
as a cycle, substitutive of a symphony,
originally called “Nature, Life and
Love”. Since Ančerl recorded all
three – they came out together on LP
with “My Home” as a makeweight – it
seems a pity to have split them up on
CD although there certainly wouldn’t
have been room for “Carnival” here.
Still,
even at the cost of having a non-Dvořák
coupling I feel the overture cycle should
have been kept together. Come to think
of it, the symphony would have been
worth far more than the asking price
even without any coupling at all. The
performances are all one would
expect and the recordings have acquired
a mellowness which the often abrasively
exciting LP originals lacked. Yet I
have to confess that, comparing the
first part of "In Nature’s Realm"
with the LP, somehow I felt more viscerally
in contact with the music than with
the CD version. But I don’t want to
make too much of this. Remember that
you’re getting what is increasingly
held to be the finest "New World"
ever.
Why was it not fully
recognised as such from the beginning?
Well, perhaps nowadays we have
no difficulty in recognising Dvořák
as a great composer; time was that he
was the composer of one popular symphony
(this one) plus a couple more that you
heard occasionally (7 and 8), a cello
concerto and some Slavonic Dances. People
thought that the poor man needed
interpretation,
interpretation that ranged from Toscanini’s
dynamic thrust to the unashamed romanticism
of Kubelík and Fricsay. Time has shown
that Dvořák was a great composer
and that Ančerl’s deep respect
for the letter of the score, allied
to interpretative imagination, is the
best way to reveal this.
Christopher Howell
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra/Karel Ančerl
