Customer Reviews

Smetana: Má Vlast

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Rafael Kubelik, that careful craftsman who did such a great job on works by Dvorak (New World Symphony) and Mahler (Symphony No. 1), presents his homeland in wonderful musical fashion. Listen very carefully to the 4th section (From Bohemia's Forests and Meadows): echoes of the land, whispering and yearning... so well rendered in its minute detail. The whole work is articulated and played with great precision. It is surely a credit to Kubelik, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Mercury sound engineers that this mono recording sounds better than a lot of stereo recordings. Sound quality: 10 out of 10. Performance: 10 also.

This CD is one of several re-releases of the famed Mercury recordings of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Rafael Kubelik. Mercury pioneered the one microphone technique for its monaural recordings. This CD is one of such recordings. On the technical side, this recording is unbelievably vivid. The sound is not unduly compressed--the orchestra's fullness can be easily felt.

Kubelik's tenure at Chicago Symphony Orchestra was brief--only about three years or so. Reputed as a gentleman with a sensitive personality, Kubelik shows his artistic sensitivity in the Smetana work. Ma Vlast is series of symphonic poems, not just a collection of pieces representing places in Bohemia. Kubelik, a Czech who left his homeland (then under Communist rule), respects the poetic side of the symphonic poems and thus tries to convey us his longing for the places that are named in this series. I find Kubelik's readings of Vysehrad (High Castle), Sarka (the third of the six "poems") and Tabor (the fifth of the six "poems") to be particularily telling; the readings evoke best Kubelik's emotion as a Czech and bring out the spirit of the more sensitive pre-Reiner Chicago Symphony.

I highly recommend this CD for Kubelik's sensitve treatment of this popular work.

This is a very fine performance of Ma Vlast, with state of the art sound (for its time). The CSO plays with much character and idiomatic feeling, and let's face it, nobody ever conducted this work better than Kubelik. The Czech personality of the piece comes through very strongly. It is a pity that Kubelik's finest recording of this work is quite difficult to find, his live digital recording of this piece shortly before he died with the Czech Philharmonic on the Supraphon label. If you find it grab it! Otherwise this Chicago version will certainly bring much listening pleasure.

I own three performances of Ma Vlast--Ancerl's with the Czech Phil, Kubelik with Boston, and now this one (I also intend to acquire Kubelik's final recording--the live performance on Supraphon--as well). Each one is superb but this is the only one that actually moved me to tears. The performance is PERFECT, as are the sonics. Don't let the fact that this is a monaural recording affect your decision about whether or not to purchase this disk because if anything, it ENHANCES this performance (go figure). There's an in-your-face immediacy that I haven't found in my other two readings that's very powerful and which is due entirely to the way it's recorded. Trust me, you won't miss the separation. And the pre-Reiner CSO simply must be heard to be believed--it's a very different animal, somehow more refined than during Reiner's tenure. I think it's safe to write that this disk is essential listening for those who want to lay claim to knowing this work.
I like to refer to Mercury Living Presence recordings as "audio Technicolor"; the sound is bigger and more vivid than anything one is likely to experience live. There's nothing "natural" about the sound of these performances. They're not to everyone's taste and they're often not considered reference works but I love them and am thrilled and grateful that so many of the mono recordings in Mercury's catalog have made it to CD. If Mrs. Fine pays any attention to these reviews and is taking requests, may I respectfully suggest Kubelik's Bloch?

This Kubelik recording of Smetana's epic cycle of symphonic poems is in itself one of the most amazing and inspired performances of the work on record. The late conductor was himself a Czechman, and you can feel his characteristic idiomatic flari on all his recordings of this work, including on here. Kubelik elicits peerless playing from his Chicago players, and you can often feel the effectiveness in the sound in painting a well-detailed picture of the Czech landscape. Equally amazing is the sound of the half-century-old Mercury monaural recording, because while the tape hiss has been kept at a minimum, you can still feel the orchestra's living presence and wide dynamic range without the extraneous intrusions that are often anomolous with monaural recordings.

The opening harp flourish in Vysherad sets the cycle off to a flying start. Every moment of this poem sees Kubelik encouraging the orchestra to give it a sweeping momentu to make it spine-tingling. Kubelik also enables the much-overplayed Vltava to sound fresh and new with a few flicks of his baton, and indeed he enables the piece to be played rapturously and seductively. The thrill and adreanaline of Sarka and the kaliedascopic and energetic lyricism of From Bohemia's Woods and Fields are engaging and inviting, without sounding boring and laboured, and they all lead up to the thrilling concluding movements Tabor and Blonik, where Kubelik is at his best, building up the tension to keep the listener in suspense when following the Hussite struggle. The two pieces are played with the fervour that they deserve, and the last few thrilling moments of Blonik crown a performance of Ma Vlast that is sure to become a benchmark standard for a long time to come.

To sum everything up, I can safely say that the monaural recording still sounds good, and this thrilling recording of Ma Vlast is sure to find a happy home in the libraries of everyone who loves soul-stirring Czech orchestral music.

I was looking for a good recording of Má Vlast, and so I phoned a friend whose opinions I respect on these things. He replied with one word: "Kubelik."

True, it's a mono recording (albeit a Mercury Living Presence), and there's a significant amount of hiss in the quieter sections, but this performance is so strong, so brilliant, that it doesn't matter. This is truly an instance where you listen through the recording to the performance.

I wanted to get a recording of "The Moldau", a haunting Romantic orchestral piece, so I went to Amazon for the reviews. A handy thing, that, although reviews have to be filtered because they mainly reflect the taste of the reviewer. But the more articulate ones give you an idea of what to expect. I went for a Rafael Kubelik recording from 1952 in mono. One microphone. He lasted 3 years with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra but was considered too modern in his repertoire. And he over-reached in his other duties as mentioned in the liner notes in the CD. This was in the early '50s! Not much of a time for innovation as far as the public was concerned (although some very good artistic work came out of this time, despite the Red scare, conformity, etc.)

I have heard maybe four versions of "The Moldau", the second part of the Ma Vlast (my country) tone poem cycle from the Czech composer Bedrich Smetana. He was a contemporary of Dvorak, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korssakoff. This recording blows you away, I highly recommend it.The strings are crisp, the brass is right there and not over done. No miscues I could notice anywhere. The tempo has a certain realness to it, the phrasing is superb and very hard to coordinate in most orchestras. This recording is much better than two of the others I have heard on radio, the third one (I could not get the name of the conductor and orchestra) may be almost up to it in quality and feeling but maybe it is not available at Amazon. It is hard to believe the full sound in this mono. I usually am put off by monaural recordings even if conducted well, wanting to hear the fullness of "2-D" sound and imagining the musicians in their locations. If you haven't heard "The Moldau" (named for the Vltava River), or even if you have, I would go for this.

I have no quarrel with Kubelík's interpretation of Má Vlast, nor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's playing. Both are good. However, I find it difficult to get through the entire piece due to the sonics of the recording. I'm sure that for 1952 the recording technique was very good; but over 50 years later it starts showing its age. There is hiss in the background, but that's not the real problem. It's hard to describe what, exactly, is wrong with the sound: perhaps "harsh"; at times it sounds a bit like your speakers are blown. This is especially noticeable when comparing it to modern recordings of the same work, but if this version comes up on my random play (without me seeing who it is), it doesn't take me long to get bothered by the sound. Not a double-blind test by any stretch of the imagination, but it happens with regularity, as it does with other recordings I have from the 1950s.

If you don't mind a somewhat bad sound for a good interpretation, this recording should be fine. But if you appreciate modern recording techniques, I would recommend looking elsewhere for Má Vlast: there are other, good recordings out there.