COMPOSERS: Brahms,Dvorak,Janacek,Martinu,Prokofiev
LABELS: Supraphon
PERFORMER: Karel Anžerl
CATALOGUE NO: See text for individual catalogue numbers
Karel Anžerl also made some of the most satisfying recordings of the Fifties and Sixties. Virtually all of them are being carefully remastered for a projected 40-disc retrospective on Supraphon.
The latest instalments feature the conductor’s blazing JANÁCEK Glagolitic Mass and Taras Bulba (SU 3667-2), the most heartfelt, dance-like DVORÁK Violin Concerto in captivity, with soloist Josef Suk (SU 3668-2) and a BRAHMS First Symphony bolstered by tight rhythms and unusually clear wind detail that enliven Anžerl’s deliberate basic tempi (SU 3669-2).
And rarely have the melodic essence and lyrical underside of PROKOFIEV’S Second Piano Concerto been so lovingly stressed as in Anžerl’s unsurpassed recording with soloist Dagmar Baloghová, coupled with the conductor’s sensitively shaped mono accounts of the Classical Symphony and First Piano Concerto with the young Sviatoslav Richter in his prime (SU 3670-2).
If Anžerl’s podium genius hasn’t yet sunk in, check out those mesmerisingly co-ordinated piano/orchestra exchanges in the finale of MARTINU’s Third Concerto (soloist Josef Pálenícek must have been sweating blood!), or the Mozartian logic with which the conductor balances the same composer’s complex choral and orchestral forces in Bouquet of Flowers, a substantial 47-minute opus heard here in its only recording (SU 3672-2).