BaL 15.03.25 - Dvořák: Symphony 8

[Barbirollians]

And I think the accompanying New World was the winner last time in BAL too.

[makropulos]

Thanks for the very nice comments about this BAL. It was a hugely enjoyable one to do. As is so often the case, there is a large pile of CDs in the corner of my room that I didn't have a chance to discuss (not least the multiple alternative versions by Kubelík, Mackerras and Szell – I simply went for my favourite among each of them), but that's the nature of the beast. What a lovely work to be able to talk about – particularly on a bright spring day in London yesterday. It turns out that I, Andrew McG and the producer had all played the work in youth orchestras when we were young, and it's one of those works that made a lasting impression on all three of us – one that has endured for decades.

[silvestrione]

Thanks for the very nice comments about this BAL. It was a hugely enjoyable one to do. As is so often the case, there is a large pile of CDs in the corner of my room that I didn't have a chance to discuss (not least the multiple alternative versions by Kubelík, Mackerras and Szell – I simply went for my favourite among each of them), but that's the nature of the beast. What a lovely work to be able to talk about – particularly on a bright spring day in London yesterday. It turns out that I, Andrew McG and the producer had all played the work in youth orchestras when we were young, and it's one of those works that made a lasting impression on all three of us – one that has endured for decades.

Does that pile contain Silvestri/LPO, I wonder. I listened to that yesterday, and thought it was thrilling, though the exaggerated slow-down for the return of the cello theme in the first movement spoiled the effect slightly.

Yes, a wonderful work from start to finish, such marvellous orchestral effects.

[seabright]

If you have a moment and know how the work ends, click this link and slide the time line forward to 7:30 in the Lehmann / Bamberg recording. It's doubtless heresy to say so, but the rewritten timpani part in the very last bars strikes me as not a bad idea at all! ...

[makropulos]

If you have a moment and know how the work ends, click this link and slide the time line forward to 7:30 in the Lehmann / Bamberg recording. It's doubtless heresy to say so, but the rewritten timpani part in the very last bars strikes me as not a bad idea at all! ...

That Lehmann/Bamberg performance was the first recording of it that I ever owned, on a Heliodor LP. The invented timp part at the end is outrageous (of course), but it's enormous fun!

[makropulos]

Does that pile contain Silvestri/LPO, I wonder. I listened to that yesterday, and thought it was thrilling, though the exaggerated slow-down for the return of the cello theme in the first movement spoiled the effect slightly.

Yes, a wonderful work from start to finish, such marvellous orchestral effects.

Oh yes! Silvestri is definitely in the pile. Pretty good sound for 1957 too. Silvestri does occasionally take liberties but the whole thing is pretty exciting, and the LPO plays very well.

[Barbirollians]

Thanks for the very nice comments about this BAL. It was a hugely enjoyable one to do. As is so often the case, there is a large pile of CDs in the corner of my room that I didn't have a chance to discuss (not least the multiple alternative versions by Kubelík, Mackerras and Szell – I simply went for my favourite among each of them), but that's the nature of the beast. What a lovely work to be able to talk about – particularly on a bright spring day in London yesterday. It turns out that I, Andrew McG and the producer had all played the work in youth orchestras when we were young, and it's one of those works that made a lasting impression on all three of us – one that has endured for decades.

Too many no doubt to mention though - that extraordinary live NYPO/Walter on Music and Arts from the late 1940s , the Rosette winning Halle/Barbirolli ( a performance of such joy ) as well as that Silvestri I would struggle to be without .

The evergreen Kertesz was striking by its “ rightness” from extracts played . I went to a concert a few years ago when a visiting Czech orchestra ( cannot remember which ) played the work as if it was a concerto for orchestra . I had to put Kertesz on when I got home just to remind myself how much greater a work it was than that .

[seabright]

There's a useful upload on YouTube where the score is reproduced on the screen while the Neumann / Czech Phil recording is being played. The final two pages show that in the last few bars, the timpanist was simply doubling the cello part. Like Makropulos, this too was my first recording but I also have Barbirolli / Halle; Munch / Boston; Szell / Cleveland; and Silvestri / LPO. I have to say that I miss those timpani doublings at the end and rather wish other conductors had taken up Lehmann's idea too! ... Incidentally, there are four Mackerras recordings of the Dvorark 8th on YouTube, with the Prague SO, Czech PhO, Hamburg PhO and Philharmonia. I haven't yet listened to the BAL all the way through but were they all mentioned? ... Anyway, at the end of this video are the final 2 pages showing the lower strings parts that were doubled by the timps in the Lehmann recording ...

[Petrushka]

If you have a moment and know how the work ends, click this link and slide the time line forward to 7:30 in the Lehmann / Bamberg recording. It's doubtless heresy to say so, but the rewritten timpani part in the very last bars strikes me as not a bad idea at all! ...

Having just heard the ending with the added timpani I can't now unhear it. To be honest, it sounds very effective and one wishes that Dvorak had thought to include it in the score.

[seabright]

It's the same with Toscanini and Tchaikovsky's "Manfred" Symphony. Arturo was by no means the great "literalist" he was made out to be. For exmple, in addition to cutting 100 bars - about five minutes of music - out of the finale, he added half-a-dozen fff tam-tam crashes to the final bars of the first movement. Here they are at the end of this video and, as with Lehmann's timpani in the Dvorak, whenever you hear "Manfred" 'as written' you miss those ferocious thwacks on the tam-tam! ...

[Barbirollians]

Somewhat surprised by its absence from consideration - albeit I recognise there are a lot of Dvorak 8's ! I have gone back to the 1957 Barbirolli .

Great to be reminded how marvellous it is from first bar to last . A Rosette winner in the old Penguin Guides and much praised in Gramophone . I could not agree more with Andrew Achenbach who in a Reputations piece about Barbirolli in 1998 stated

" In the last three Dvorak symphonies he acheived miracels of grace, ungridled excitementand joyful lyricism: take my word his intensely charismatic 1957 Halle Eighth is pure gold."

[Gargoyle]

Silvestri for me. Dohnanyi too.

[mikealdren]

Yes, I like the Dohnanyi too although I prefer the Chung which doesn't seem to have mentioned yet.

[Keraulophone]

There's a useful upload on YouTube where the score is reproduced on the screen while the Neumann / Czech Phil recording is being played. The final two pages show that in the last few bars, the timpanist was simply doubling the cello part

There seems to have been a Czech Phil tradition for some more doubling...

I first noticed it when Neumann and this orchestra played No.8 at the RFH, broadcast live on Radio 3. It was probably around 1982, when I'd moved into a damp C16th Cornish Keep (thankfully for only a few months). Just before the end of the finale in bars 380-384, the horns double the 2nd violins, violas and cellos, playing quavers rather than the strings' semis. The effect is thrilling, especially if the horns are those of the Czech PO! I quickly discovered that Talich did the same thing in his recording with this orchestra, but its more recent conductors have tended to ignore this particular tradition. A pity, I say.

[richardfinegold]

Fwiw, this is Tully Potter’s take on the broadcast from his Facebook page:
LES PENSÉES DE POTTER – 28


I don’t often catch ‘Building a Library’ on Radio 3 these days, as it has also been shunted into a siding. But I did catch some of the item on Dvořák’s G major Symphony, about which I have just been writing, by coincidence. I caught up with more of it online but was very lukewarm about most of the shortlist – why are we still being told how wonderful the Kertesz records of this composer are, when they were eclipsed even in their own time by Rowicki’s series with the same orchestra (neither conductor managed to galvanise the blasé LSO in the ‘New World’)? A friend is getting me the live Hrusa/VPO version, which sounded good – I fell foul of the Philharmoniker website. The Viennese usually round off Dvořák’s corners too much but Hrusa is such a wonderful musician that I am sure his performance is worth having.
Unless I somehow missed it, no mention was made of a great conductor-and-orchestra combination in this most lovable of all Dvořák symphonies, Václav Neumann and the Czech Philharmonic. I seem to remember that Tony Burton chose one of their versions as the best on a previous occasion. Spurred on by Rob Cowan, I have just bought myself Neumann’s superb CPO concert at the 1988 Lucerne Festival (Audite 97.832) and the Eighth is as good as he promised. I might want the slow passages in the finale, including the opening, a fraction faster, but on a second hearing these may not bother me at all. Playing and conducting are both ‘foist cless’, as Hyman Kaplan would say.
Two more of the ‘K’ conductors were featured, Kubelík and Karajan. I find the entire BPO series by Kubelík very disappointing, including the Eighth, and I cannot see Karajan as a Dvořák conductor, although I must defend him on one point. I think it was he who came in for criticism over excessive portamento in the Trio of the Allegretto grazioso, with Andrew McGregor doing his usual nodding-dog act. Well, all I can say in that regard is that portamento is inherent to the style of Dvořák, Brahms, Elgar, Mahler, even Ravel and Bartók, neither of whom ever heard a string player who did not employ it.
I agreed with the selection of historic conductors who excelled in this symphony, Talich, Stupka and so on, but we were not vouchsafed a hearing of any of them – I have all of them on my shelves, anyway. Meanwhile, it’s back to Neumann…
PS: I am rather fond of the cycle on Exton by Zdeněk Mácal and the CPO, with the exception of the Second, which he thought fit to cut to ribbons. The sound is lovely, too.