Jan Novák (1921-1984)
Orchestral Music – Volume One
Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra (1949)
Concerto for Oboe and Chamber Orchestra (1952)
Concentus biiugis for piano four hands and string orchestra (1977)
Alice Rajnohová (piano)
Vilém Veverka (oboe)
Lucie Schinzelová, Kristýna Znamenáčková (piano duet)
Ensemble Opera Diversa/Gabriela Tardonová
rec. 2015/2019, Besední dům & Brothers of Charity Monastery, Brno, Czechia
TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC0551 [75]
There isn’t much music by Jan Novák to be found at the moment and what little there is tends to be chamber music, which makes Toccata’s release all the more welcome. Novák was Moravian and studied between 1947-48 with Martinů in New York. Short though this period was, it proved formative, and a sequence of works followed including the cantata Dido – which you should be able to find in a performance conducted by Rafael Kubelík – amongst much else, bigger and smaller in scope. Novák left Czechoslovakia in 1968, first moving to Denmark, thence to Italy and finally to West Germany where he lived in Bavaria until his death in 1984.
The disc under review brings two premičre recordings and only the oddly-titled Concentus biiugis has been recorded before. The Concerto for piano and string orchestra dates from 1949, written in the immediate aftermath of his studies with Martinů. He’d shown an earlier proposed concerto to Martinů, but the senior composer hadn’t liked it so Novák rewrote it. It’s certainly more than slightly reminiscent of Martinů’s stylistic direction, though with a slightly less abrupt and jagged aesthetic, one that is marginally more refined in execution. Yet those moments of exultant oscillation between the dramatic-rhythmic and lyrical are identifiably those of his erstwhile teacher. Even the title of the central movement, a Pastorale, can’t escape the influence though here an element of truculence contrasts with the lyric. The playful and exciting finale is still under Martinů’s influence – it’s difficult to review it without ascribing everything to Martinů’s precedent but there are, to be exact, some elements that do seem to assert a degree of independence.
The Oboe Concerto (1952) is a gorgeously attractive work, perky, vivid, finely orchestrated and charged, once more, with his one-time mentor’s motor rhythms. The Classicism in the central slow movement equates to a pastoral arcadia, with avian chirping and a gauze-like warmth, whilst the finale is fast and neatly laid out. It’s highly spruce, albeit the ending itself is a touch inconclusive. The Concentus biiugis for piano four hands and string orchestra dates from 1977 and its title approximates to ‘a concert of two yoked together’. Its syncopation is vividly realised and the outer movements are rightly – and splendidly – propulsive but the core lies in the central movement. This opens diaphanously, the piano over walking bass before generating greater athleticism. The lucidity of the conception and the manner in which the music resolves to a calm reflective end in the Lento is wonderfully done. The finale sees another major influence at work: Stravinsky. The Rite of Spring rhythms encourage glistening and glittering piano writing, folklorically angular and a notably successful example of the piano four-hands genre.
The soloists acquit themselves in style. Alice Rajnohová has the full measure of the Piano Concerto and Vilém Veverka, as one would expect of the Czech Lands’ leading oboist, plays with agility and tonal lustre. The two-piano team of Lucie Schinzelová and Kristýna Znamenáčková marry athleticism with sensitivity in their work. The orchestra is a new one to me, Ensemble Opera Diversa, a Brno-based ensemble well versed in new music and theatre projects, for whom the music of Novák is a central concern, and which is directed by Gabriela Tardonová. Though the works were recorded in 2015 and 2019 in two different locations you really wouldn’t know. Tardonová proves a splendid conduit for Novák’s music and the whole disc cements his reputation as the most notable and successful of all Martinů’s post-War students.
Jonathan Woolf
