These recordings, as the surprisingly entertaining liner-notes
tell us, very nearly did not happen. The members of the Czech
Philharmonic Orchestra were, in November 1938, nearly all enlisted
in the Czechoslovak army, scattered across various military
outposts on the nation’s borders during the run-up to
World War II. Seven weeks after Hitler annexed the Sudetenland
and four months before he grabbed the rest of Czechoslovakia,
a brief window of opportunity opened up in which the orchestra
members were given leave to pack their instruments for a short
trip to London. The arrangements were made by Jan Masaryk, Czechoslovak
envoy to London and a future Supraphon pianist himself.
In a matter of just two days Talich and his orchestra hunkered
down in the EMI Abbey Road Studios and recorded Dvorák’s
Sixth and Seventh Symphonies, plus Josef Suk’s
Serenade for Strings and Sokol March. All those
recordings are here except the Seventh, which was released
by Naxos on a previous
CD coupled to a 1935 version of the Eighth. The Czechs
being, even then, one of the finest orchestras in the world,
there is no sign of hurry, no evidence of sloppy playing or
lack of preparation, no need for more rehearsal time. I have
grown sick of the cliché of performers having music ‘in
their blood,’ but there are few recordings for which that
phrase would be more appropriate.
In the Suk Serenade, which sounds so plainly lovely but
is in fact hard to conduct right, Talich thankfully avoids any
temptation to rush or hurry the music. This is the trap into
which Christopher Warren-Green and the London Chamber Orchestra
fall on Virgin Classics; another trap is restraint, or an unwillingness
to let the music be as pretty as possible, and here the guilty
parties are Volker Hartung and the European Philharmonic on
Profil.
No, this is a lovely, very romantic performance, one in which
the soloists - violin and cello in the first movement, two violins
and cello in the slow movement - indulge in frequent portamenti
and the overall speeds convey a just-right sense of youthful
charm and the peace of the outdoors. Mark Obert-Thorn’s
transfer is vastly superior to EMI’s own re-mastering,
which cleaned up the hiss but at the expense of clarity. The
Naxos recording features less in the way of shrill first violins
and greater presence for the rest of the band. This is, alongside
the Capella Istropolitana recording under Jaroslav Krcek on
Naxos (the first Naxos disc I ever owned), one of the great
performances of the Suk Serenade, and there is room on
my shelf for both. Talich’s recording of the brief, exuberant
Sokol March, currently unavailable anywhere else (previously
recorded by Altrichter, Kubelik and Klima), makes a festive
opener.
Now, on to the main course: Dvorák’s Sixth.
The opening bars are slow, dangerously slow maybe, but the Czech
Philharmonic is just getting ready. This is, above all, a performance
in the classic romantic style, very generous in rubato and phrasing,
very flexible in tempos. Nowhere are its merits more apparent
than in the slow movement, at 13:28 the slowest I have ever
heard this music (compare to 12:18 for Mackerras, 11:30 for
Kubelík and Kertesz, 11:01 for Ancerl, or 10:13 for Suitner).
But, against expectations, I actually found myself more engaged
by the music than in any more hurried performance: Talich invites
us to lap up every gorgeous woodwind solo at a pace which enables
us to savour them.
And lest you think that the slow timing is the product of lethargy,
the finale, by contrast, is given one of the fastest and most
exciting renditions I know, a full two minutes faster than Mackerras
or Kubelík. The string fugato at the beginning of the
coda loses some of its clarity and heft at this speed, but there
is certainly no lack of thrills. The only other major fault
I can find with this performance is the near-total lack of presence
for the timpani, which in the first movement might as well not
exist. Unfortunately, I do not have the Supraphon reissue of
this performance to compare sound quality.
All in all, these are great performances by any standard, historical
or not, with the Dvorák slow movement going to the top
of my list and the Suk a delight from beginning to end. With
playing this marvellous, and this idiomatically Bohemian, captured
in re-mastered sound this easy to enjoy, and the excellent booklet
notes are a bonus. Lovers of Czech music ought to hear this
no matter how many recordings of these works they already own.
Brian Reinhart
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra/Vaclav Talich 
