CityLife

Prague Symphony Orchestra: Janacek, Dvorak

LISTENING to musicians from Prague playing Janacek and Dvorak is a good experience.

This isn’t just idiomatic – it’s music that’s in their bones. Like hearing the Vienna Volksoper orchestra play Die Fledermaus.

And, oddly enough, there was a hint of that operetta in the Prague Symphony’s encore at the Bridgewater Hall: Dvorak’s Slavonic Dance no. 7 in C, from the op. 72 set, seems almost to quote one of its choruses.

At first, I thought the sweet sound we associate with Czech music-making wasn’t going to be very evident.

The Janacek starter – known as Zarlivost (Jealousy) and originally written as a prelude to Jenufa – is hard-edged, and perhaps conductor Libor Pesek wanted to get away from any cloying sentiment.

But once we were a few bars into Dvorak’s cello concerto (the soloist was the young Russian virtuosa, Nina Kotova), the music hit its quiet second theme, they hit authentic lyrical form, with a blended sound and ringing solos from the wind principals.

Tremulous

The horn sound was warm and just slightly tremulous (you’d never hear that with an English orchestra); the clarinet pure and haunting, the oboe plaintive and sorrowful, the flute ethereal and bird-like.

The same thing emerged again and again – in the ‘New World’ symphony, too. They clearly have at least two very fine horn soloists.

Nina Kotova followed suit in her presentation of the solo – almost sentimental in its melodic beauty, and absolutely captivating.

Her intonation was momentarily wayward in the slow movement, but it was a tiny blemish in a masterly performance, with a brisk pace for the finale main theme highly contrasted with its gentkler episodes.

Libor Pesek – an old friend to Liverpudlians, whose orchestra he took charge of some years ago – needs little extroversion to control his forces in music such as this. Just a clear beat, and the odd flick or sweep, is quite enough.

The results were illuminating, though I would have preferred the brass ensemble to be a little less trumpet-dominated.

He achieved dignity and uncovered beauty of detail in the famous ‘Hovis’ largo of the symphony, and built the tension of the finale to a vigorous climax.
 

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