BaL 14.04.18 - Dvořák: Piano Quintet no. 2 in A major

[LeMartinPecheur]

I concur with you. I was left at the end of the BaL, feeling - well - a little short-changed. I wasn't sure what to make of it. Usually with a good BaL, I am enthused to sometimes seek out recordings which were mentioned during the presenter's discourse, and more often than not, thinking that I could happily listen to the presenter for much longer than the allowed 45 to 55 minutes. Not this time, however. A pity, as I had been looking forward to this BaL, Dvorak's chamber music being amongst my most-loved music of the genre. It was a tad boring; that word crossed my mind about 15 minutes in!

I listened with interest but can understand why some boarders were underwhelmed. Is it something about the work??

Not that I dislike it, please understand(*). But it's a happy work - can you really do anything badly wrong to it? Doesn't it kinda play itself? Perhaps there was a hint about this in the way RM sought to make a bit of a Big Point about attitudes to the work having changed - older recordings going for untroubled sunny skies where modern ones finding more hints of sadness. But nobody's going to make it into late Beethoven or Mahler are they? (Well, if they do they go straight down the plug!)

If there isn't a big dollop of tragedy in a work and big contrasts/dramas to integrate, surely performers will generally get it about right and leave much less for the BaL reviewer to make big points about?

(*) It was one of my very first chamber-music LP acquisitions - Jan Panenka and the Smetana 4tet, HMV ASD 2350 c/w the American 4tet. This did me very nicely till quite recently when I got a charity-shop CD version c/w what is now billed as D's first piano quintet - in 1972 there was only one! During the programme I dragged out that CD to see if it was still in with a chance, only to discover that it was by, guess who? Panenka and the Smetana 4tet, exactly the same personnel but recorded 20+ years later. And both perfs NLA Does anyone else like them??