Smetana Ma Vlast

[salymap]

Which, if any, complete recordings do you have?

I have LPs of Sargent with the RPO

CD of Libor Pesek with the RLPO

Both first rate. Much as I love Vltava and Bohemia's Woods I think this important work deserves more complete performances and I am shocked to discover it's never been done complete at the Proms.

[Tevot]

Hello Salymap

Much as I love Vltava and Bohemia's Woods I think this important work deserves more complete performances and I am shocked to discover it's never been done complete at the Proms.


Could this be down to practicalities? The whole cycle lasts some 75 minutes and I find that it can drag. The famous pieces you mention might probably be played regularly because they are stand alone works in their own right (over ten minutes long) and can act as a kind of overture. And dare I say also that they might be famous because they are the musically strongest / most memorable of the set?

Must admit to having a very soft spot for Vysehrad however. The full (Naxos) recording I have is with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra under Antoni Wit.

I'd be interested to read what others think. Does Ma Vlast work as a whole?

Best wishes,

Tevot

[Chris Newman]

Does Ma Vlast work as a whole?

For me it certainly works as a whole on records (CD) of which I have:

Ancerl: CPO
Davis: LSO
Kubelik: CPO
Kubelik: BRSO
Mackerras: CPO
Norrington: LCP
Talich: CPO
Wit: PNRSO

I much prefer to hear Ma Vlast as a whole. My mind's ear expects the music of Vltava to naturally follow on at the conclusion of Vysehrad. The composition is an organic structure from the questioning harps at the opening to the promise of a bright future at the end of Blanik. To play Vltava or From Bohemia's Woods and Fields in isolation feels like the BBC R3 Breakfast programme or ClassicFM where they quite nonchalantly rip a torso like the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth or a Bruckner scherzo from a whole living body and expect it to survive.

A few years ago I saw the Corps de Ballet at the State Opera in Prague perform Ma Vlast as a a ballet. It portrayed the tragic past of Bohemia from the hard times of the Przemysł rule through central Europe's bloody history punctuated by some rare periods of peace and then the horrors and drudgeries of 20th century dictatorships. It was a tear-jerking experience yet remained absolutely faithful to the music.

[salymap]

Chris, thanks as ever, someone else had put what I want to say so much better than I can. After M1 I was thinking, as you do, that just performing the tuneful favourite movements is as much dumbing down as anything done on the programmes we moan about. Plenty of other works last 75 mins or more. Let's treat it with more respect. Perhap a a BaL or other programme about it is due for the doubters. This is a wonderful work.

[Bryn]

Very similar to Chris's list:

Wit,
Kubelik (2),
Norrington (my favourite, by quite a stretch),
Talich,
Ancerl,
Mackerras

and yes, I works best as a complete cycle, to my ears.

[madamesuggia]

I got to know Ma Vlast from a recording on a cassette tape with Walter Weller conducting.

The version I treasure on cd now is the VPO Kubelik.

[Roehre]

I've got both Kubeliks, and IMO the cycle works perfectly, it's just a kind of 6 mvt symphony or symphonic poem.
There are thematic relationships, and Tabor ends in the way Blanik begins e.g. (The Hussite hymn we know from Dvorak's Hussite-overture)

[eighthobstruction]

It is a marvellous piece to take with you on a long walk....I haven't joined the ipod generation, so the experience I talk about is with Walkman....but some how the high points of the work always seemed to coincide with landscape around Otley N Yorks....

[Mahlerei]

There's a new recording from Flor and the Malaysian Philharmonic on BIS. Their Rimsky partnership was very fine amd this orchestra is really rather good. I have ordered my copy and will report back when I've had a chanvce to hear it.

[verismissimo]

I seem to have three versions - Talich, Neumann and a different Kubelik (with the Boston Symphony).

Rather agree with others re not listening to the whole at one sitting. Only heard it once - at the RFH with the men-only Czech Philharmonic twentyish years ago - and much as I wanted to love it all, it didn't seem to me to work very well as a whole.

[Barbirollians]

Rob Cowan was raving about a Talich live performance during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939 - anyone heard it ?

[Basil]

Chris, thanks as ever, someone else had put what I want to say so much better than I can. After M1 I was thinking, as you do, that just performing the tuneful favourite movements is as much dumbing down as anything done on the programmes we moan about. Plenty of other works last 75 mins or more. Let's treat it with more respect. Perhap a a BaL or other programme about it is due for the doubters. This is a wonderful work.

Could not agree more, this is the one piece that has been on all my desert island lists.

I only have one complete recording on CD, by Karel Ancerl and on LP I have

Kubelik - BSO,
Talich - CPO,
Weller - Israel PO
Bergland - Staatskapelle Dresden

The one person I wish had recorded the whole work is Karajan, I adore the two parts he has recorded, no prizes for guessing which ones!

[Steerpike]

Me too for a desert island - and it has to be all of it.

Mine are Davis, Kubelik (Boston and Prague), Kuchar, Norrington, Talich (1954) and Wit. Probably Kubelik for the island.

I love Czech music in general, and Smetana in particular, more and more as age creeps on. Ma Vlast gives me positively Elgarian goose bumps!

[Basil]

Can't help but notice Roger Norrington has been mentioned in two posts now. When I think of Ma Vlast, Norrington doesn't spring immediately to mind, in fact if I were to write a list of works, never to be conducted by RN, Ma Vlast would probably be at, or very near the top.

This I have to hear, and there's a copy going cheap on Amazon.

[Suffolkcoastal]

For me it is as usual just one recording (as many of you know I prefer, and tend to have only one version in any one format in my collection), in this case its the Kubelik: Boston Symphony Orchestra, though I have Karajan performces of Vyserhad and Vltava on LP. I have listened tro the cycle complete on a few occasions and have to admit that it might tend to 'drag' if they are played as a cycle in a concert, but individually they are delightful and some of the lesser known ones could do with more frequent programming.