Talich’s Má Vlast
is self-recommending but which of the three versions should
you have, if you have to limit yourself to one? The 1929 recording
preserves the Czech Philharmonic in its inter-war glory in its
home town, not on a London tour. The 1941 traversal is a defiant
paean, fast and lithe, and its Biddulph restoration was a triumph.
However for most this 1954 cycle is the one that best reflects
Talich’s evocation of the national character and myth, that
is captured in the best sound, and that finds the conductor
at his most musically colloquial. It also had the advantage
of having been recorded in the Rudolfinum, the previous recordings
having been made in the Trades Union House (1929) and the National
Theatre (1941).
The performance
has glories almost without number. The finely focused harp and
the succulence of the strings are two of the more obvious. The
nobility of the brass and the crispness of rhythm are their
equals in this lexicon of musical perception. The string playing
in Vyšehrad is intense, the verdant naturalness of Talich’s
unfolding of Vltava glorious. He may have been matched,
indeed surpassed, in sheer voltage among native conductors by
Kubelík and Jeremiáš, but Talich’s steadier hold is magnificent
in its own different way. Šarka has power but also absolute
clarity of articulation. From Bohemia’s Woods
and Forests – the Czech title Z českých luhů
a hájů resonates buoyantly as the English doesn’t
– is notable for the precision and unanimity of the high lying
first violin passages and for the tangy lower winds, for the
bassoon passages and the basses, for the whole gamut of folkloric
inflection. Tabor’s powerful brass and percussion are
testimony to the revitalised standards of the post war orchestra.
But there’s also deftness and clarity here – try 3.40 in. Those
Bachian and organ cadences sound massively well in Talich’s
hands. Sweeping grandeur drives Blaník to a heroic peroration.
Still, you knew
all this. Naxos usually discloses its source material but not
here. But there’s little noticeable difference between this
transfer and the Supraphon CD I have – which is the one that
ante-dates the Talich edition set and is thus no longer
in print. Without leaving the Czech Lands your essential “native
son” Má Vlast performances from this sort of generation
include the three Talich recordings, the 1961 Ančerl in
the Supraphon Gold Edition, and the earlier Otakar Jeremiáš
(Prague Radio Symphony, 1943 in a cloudy LYS transfer). Kubelík’s
pre-war incomplete set with the Czech Philharmonic is magnificent
but only an ancillary recommendation because of what we unfortunately
lack. His later recordings naturally all merit collection. For
the Talich collector however this 1954 set is glorious and the
one that remains the most generally recommendable.
Jonathan Woolf
Czech Philharmonic
Orchestra/Václav Talich
