 | No. 374 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages is this week's Friday Blog and Podcast. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast374 |
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Blogger’s Note: As we review our many musical shares
from our musical forum activities under our ongoing “222 Day Binge Challenge”,
the Friday Blog and Podcast will revisit some themes from past Tuesday Blogs.
Today’s montage is part of that exercise. The Tuesday post in question was
issued on December
26, 2011. The programme reuses some of the same works and the below
commentary is taken almost verbatim from the original post.
About the Work
Ma Vlast (transl. My Country, or My Fatherland) is a tone
poem cycle by the Czech composer Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884). Though other
Czech composers (Dvořák and Suk) wrote a lot of folk-inspired music from their homeland,
Ma Vlast stands out as being more of a patriotic work, not unlike Sibelius'
Finlandia, for instance.
The six tone poems that make-up Ma Vlast are a mix of
folklore, legend and atmosphere. From the on-set, the poems were meant to be
played as part of a larger group, and Smetana makes use of Leitmotivs and other
such devices to sew the music together into one large fabric.
Of the lot, Vltava (The Moldau) is probably the most famous,
having been recorded as a stand-alone piece by almost every major conductor.
However, one cannot lose sight of the other five, as they all have their own
charm and particular potency.
The Conductor
Czech conductor Rafael Kubelik (1914-1996) is a member of
the great generation of conductors born between 1908 and 1920 which includes
names like Bernstein, Karajan and Giulini. After graduating from the Prague
conservatory, he gives his first performance as conductor with the Czech
Philharmonic in 1937, and becomes its Principal Conductor in 1942, succeeding Vaclav
Talich.
When the Communist regime takes hold in then-Czechoslovakia,
he chooses exile and leaves his homeland in 1948 going first to England, then
to the USA where he becomes the Music Director of the Chicago Symphony
(1950–1953), then music director at Covent Garden (1955 -1958). He guest
conducts regularly in Berlin and Vienna and, in 1961, begins a near-20 year
tenure with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (1961–1979).
This particular relationship sees Kubelik record great
repertoire from the classical, romanitic and Second Viennese periods. However,
Kubelik's wheel-house repertoire remains Czech and Bohemian music by Dvořák,
Janáček, Martinů et Smetana.
The Kubelik / Ma Vlast Marriage
While still in Prage in 1847, Kubelik sets up the "Prague Spring Music Festival". It is the tradition at this festival that Ma Vlast be played at the inaugural concert, and that Beethoven's Ninth be played at the closing concert.
There is no better match than that of Kubelik and Ma Vlast -
the patriotic Czech work performed by the sensitive conductor, hopping all over
Europe and North-America while longing for his homeland.
Today’s montage assembles the entire corpus of six tone
poems, from six Kubelik recordings available commercially. They are
(chronologically):
· 1953, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
· 1958, with the Vienna Philharmonic
· 1971, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra
· 1984, with the Symphonieorchester Des Bayerischen Rundfunks
· 1991 with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
I think you will (still) love this music too.
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