Glad birthday Bedřich Smetana! This weekend sees the launch of 2024’s 12 months of Czech Music, established 100 years in the past to mark the composer’s centenary and held each 10 years since. For his bicentenary, the Czech Philharmonic has launched a stirring recording of Smetana’s masterpiece, Má vlast (My Homeland), carried out by its chief conductor and music director, Semyon Bychkov (Pentatone). Describing the work as an emblem of Czech independence, “like a nationwide anthem or the holy Bible”, Bychkov urges each element, each surge, swell or sea of tears, from his gamers.
Luscious harp arpeggios set the tone within the first of six sections. The well-known standalone motion, Vltava (The Moldau), is a swirling imaginative and prescient of the river’s journey from distant forest to Prague and past. For 40 near-empty bars, two flutes weave, trickle and swirl, till the dam breaks and inundations of melody cascade forth throughout the orchestra. The darkish story of Šárka, Bohemia’s woods and fields, a strong-willed warrior, Tábor, and the victorious finale, Blaník, full this work, fantastically performed with matchless understanding and character.
“Telepathic communication” is how the German countertenor Andreas Scholl expresses the kinship between himself and the baroque ensemble Accademia Bizantina, after 20 years of collaboration. Their Invocazioni Mariane (Naïve), directed by violinist Alessandro Tampieri, explores the determine of the Virgin Mary by way of Neapolitan works from the 18th century (Salve Regina by Pasquale Anfossi, Leonardo Vinci’s oratorio Maria dolorata and instrumental works by Nicola Porpora and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi). The spotlight is a piece lengthy related to Scholl, Vivaldi’s restlessly melancholic Stabat Mater. The spiky strings within the Eia Mater, fons amoris, the faster speeds and subtly totally different high quality of Scholl’s mature voice make this as worthwhile as his unique recording of 1995 with Ensemble 415 on Harmonia Mundi. If something, the urgency right here heightens the temper of struggling.
