Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 / Piano Concerto No. 4 / Romance for Violin No. 2 [Import]

Karel Ancerl | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 30, 2009)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Supraphon
• ASIN: B0001NPU8S
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Conventional Beethoven that does Ancerl's reputation no good, December 11, 2010

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Santa Fe Listener (Santa Fe, NM USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 / Piano Concerto No. 4 / Romance for Violin No. 2 (Audio CD)

I've been following all of Supraphon's releases in their extensive Ancerl Gold edition, but among the riches there are some performances it might have been better to leave behind. For the average listener, this mediocre Beethoven Fifth, in clear but limited mono, will be one. The initial statement of the famous four-note motto signals the worst by its ponderous, weighty announcement of no thrills to come. The movement plows ahead with steady resolve but is played with some enthusiasm by the Czech Phil., even if I didn't share in it. A sharp, glaring first trumpet doesn't help matters. The slow movement's Andante con moto is taken at conventional speed and displays enough vigor to keep moving forward, but it's mostly mezzo forte and forte all the way, again with the glaring trumpet. An absence of finesse is unmistakable, as it is in the Scherzo, where Ancerl does little more than place one foot ahead of the other. The sunburst of C major in the finale is bright, but even at a moderate tempo the lower strings are in for a struggle. In all, this is a performance that would have been fine at a subscription concert but in no way special.

I had never heard of Josef Palenicek, but then, quite a number of Ancerl's live recordings feature Czech performers whose appeal was local. The pianist sets a brisk tempo in the opening bars, and if anything Ancerl immediately steps up the pace. A movement that usually takes 18-21 min. is dispatched in 16 min. flat. I'm set to appreciate the added pace, but Palenicek is decidedly conventional and sober. He has a good touch and no idiosyncracies, but he pushes the tempo without offering anything glittering or high-spirited. Given that the pianist was a lawyer, a music professor, and a Communist party member, I can only say that he plays like all three. After a clumpy slow movement, the finale is at least sprightly. A disappointing CD can't be redeemed by its last eight minutes, but during that time we get the best thing here, Oistrakh's lovely reading of Beethoven's Romance No. 2, in somewhat less good mono than the piano concerto.

In all, this is one to put low on your list of Ancerl mementos.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars another entry for a release I found valuable mainly for the Piano Concerto, December 7, 2010

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Discophage (France) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 / Piano Concerto No. 4 / Romance for Violin No. 2 (Audio CD)

There are very few Beethoven symphonies in Ancerl's discography, especially from the Czech studios: he recorded only No. 1 (it's now paired with Brahms' First on the Gold series, Ancerl Gold Edition 9: Brahms & Beethoven / Symphony no. 1) and the Fifth featured here; live recordings of 6 and 8 with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra have also showed up, Beethoven: Symphony No. 6; Martinu: Symphony No. 5, Edition Karel Ancerl, Vol.1. This very rarity makes those he did record all the more interesting for the Ancerl afficionado. They also date from early on in his tenure at the helm of the Czech Philharmonic (he was appointed in October 1950): both the 1st and the 5th were recorded in February 1953, in the mono era. The 4th Piano Concerto with Palenicek and 2nd Romance with Oistrakh also date from respectively October 1953 and April 1954. The mono sound lacks spaciousness, but is clear and with very minimal tape hiss.

That said, Ancerl's 5th is a good version, perfectly realized in its chosen and quite traditional style, but a style that offers little revelation. Tempos are unhurried but not slow, with a few big rhetorical gestures in the first movement (some slowed down and overbearingly insistent pom-pom-pom pom), articulation is always crisp, accents are sharp, brass are suitably regal when required (2nd and 3rd movements). Fluctuating between 65 and 80, the "andante con moto" is a far cry from Beethoven's 92 but, mostly, it flows nicely. The finale unfolds more majesty and stateliness than exultant and triumphant joy, and the tempo for the return of the third movement (at 3:43) is marginally faster than on its initial presentation (something like 92 doted half-notes/mn to 77).

I have many versions of the 5th in my collection and this is not one I would have been likely to keep. On the other hand, Ancerl's recording of the 4th Piano Concerto with Josef Palenicek illustrates an original approach (more now than back then), one that will not be to all tastes but that I find entirely convincing. Theirs is a brisk approach, and although that kind of approach seems in fact to have been the norm before the 1950s (a conclusion based on hearing the recordings of Schabel in 1933 and 1946, Gieseking-Böhm in 1939 and Casadesus-Ormandy and Rubinstein-Beecham in 1947), among those versions and all the subsequent ones I've heard, only Gieseking-Böhm take the first movement faster (Gieseking Plays Beethoven: Piano Concerto Nos. 4 & 5 or Walter Gieseking performs Beethoven Concertos 4 & 5 (Dante)). Partly as a result, Ancerl is always dynamic, exuberant, triumphant in the finale, springly, sharply accented, with crisp staccato from the woodwinds. In its clarity and taste for the dry staccato, Palenicek's piano playing sounds very French, and it is no surprise to learn that he completed his studies at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris, and was also a composition pupil of Albert Roussel. There is nothing in this reading of the genial, dreamy or brooding quality found by most subsequent interpretations in the fourth, it turns it rather into a close kin to the Emperor. Many raised on other traditions are likely to findd it too rushed and betraying the composition's inherent lyricism; I find it illuminating and convincing. It's like the Violin Concerto, to which the 4th Piano Concerto is often compared: to play it as an "essentially lyrical" and laid-back composition is pure interpretation; the score doesn't necessarily make it that way, what makes it that way is the way performers interpret and play the notes and tempos. Under Palenicek and Ancerl I hear no loss of lyricism, but I also hear the bubbling energy that is missing in more nonchalant readings. Only in the second movement do I find that Ancerl and Palenicek's straightforward approach and recessed orchestra, underplaying the contrast with the piano, only skim the surface. We are not told whose cadenza Palenicek plays in the first movement (presumably his own, since he was also a composer), and it doesn't sound very Beethovenian, but its great and inventive nonetheless. Palenicek may have had less international exposure than Rudolf Firskusny, but he is, like him, one of the major Czech pianists of the LP era. He recorded the complete piano works of Janacek for Supraphon (Janácek: Piano Works), which was the direct competitor of Firskusny's DG recordings (Leos Janácek: Piano Works; Solo Piano; Concertino and Capriccio). He was also a noted champion of the piano music of Martinu.

For a bonus, Oistrakh, recorded in 1954, offers a gentle and sweet and sentimental view of the 2nd Romance, that could make you think you were in a Tamino aria from the Magic Flute longing for his beloved Pamina. Note that the same recording was issued earlier by Supraphon with Oistrakh's and Ancerl's contemporary recording of Mozart's 3rd Violin Concerto, plus good versions of Lalo's Symphonie espagnole and Ravel's Tzigane performed by Ida Haendel in 1963: Mozart: Violin Concerto; Beethoven: Romance No. 2; Lalo: Symphonie espagnole; Ravel: Tzigane.

Since I wrote this review, Santa Fe Listener posted his contradictory and sobering view. That and another positive endorsement by another big reviewing shot, Michael B. Richman, can be found under the disc's other entry, Ancerl Gold Edition 25: BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 5 / Piano Concerto No. 4 / Violin Romance No. 2.