Smetana’s career as an orchestral composer divides into two more or less distinct phases, separated by the decade from 1862-72 when he was preoccupied with opera. It was the composition of the cycle of nationalistic symphonic poems Má Vlast (My Homeland), completed in 1879, that brought Smetana back to the orchestra: those six works quickly became his most widely known orchestral scores, and the Prague Radio Symphony’s performances of them, bristling with energy and vivid intent when required, rightly take pride of place in Petr Popelka’s survey of the major orchestral works.
But the CD catalogue is already well furnished with outstanding versions of Má Vlast, both from other Czech orchestras and further afield, and it’s Popelka’s performances of the other works here that single this set out as thoroughly worthwhile. Taking up one of the three discs, the Festive Symphony Op 6, which Smetana composed in 1853 and 1854 to celebrate the wedding of Emperor Franz Joseph I, is generally unremarkable, with its debts to a whole range of early 19th-century models – Weber, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Beethoven – all too obvious. But the symphonic poems that followed in the late 1850s, after an encounter with Liszt and all based on literary sources, mark the real emergence of Smetana’s mature style. As Popelka’s intensely dramatic readings demonstrate, all three pieces – Richard III, after Shakespeare’s play; Wallenstein’s Camp, after Schiller; and Hakon Jarl, based on Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger’s tragedy – deserve to be heard outside Czechia far more often than they are.
The sleeve notes include a lengthy and fascinating conversation with the conductor about Smetana’s orchestral music, and the set’s only disappointment is the inclusion of the First String Quartet (AKA From My Life) in an orchestration by the celebrated conductor George Szell. What might have seemed a good idea in theory seems unnaturally bloated in performance, and only blunts the impact of what is one of the most starkly dramatic quartets in the repertory; even Popelka and his fine orchestra can’t make it convincing.
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