ORCHESTRAL CHOICE
A richly colourful Smetana landscape
The Czech composer’s bicentenary is celebrated in style, says John Allison
Smetana
Má Vlast
Czech Philharmonic/Semyon Bychkov
Pentatone PTC5187203 81:02 mins
Few works enjoy a more distinguished discography than Má Vlast, the crowning glory of Smetana’s orchestral output. Rafael Kubelík alone made five commercial recordings — his last with the Czech Philharmonic, for whom this music is practically the Bible. Semyon Bychkov began immersing himself in Má Vlast not long after being appointed as the orchestra’s music director in 2018, but has waited until now to record the cycle of six tone poems, with the release timed for Smetana’s bicentenary.
Mixing nature with historical and mythical heroics, the six freestanding movements offer the listener a sweeping tour of Czech culture and landscape. Though the first two tone poems (‘Vyšehrad’ and ‘Vltava’) are justifiably popular, it hardly needs saying that there is nothing banal about Bychkov’s meticulously mapped performances and that his attention to detail never stifles the music’s spontaneity.
Finding an almost operatic (wordless, of course) energy, he tightens the dramatic screw in ‘Šarka’ before relaxing into a joyous account of ‘From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields’ that points up, fittingly, a fleeting allusion to Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony. The final two panels, ‘Tábor’ and ‘Blaník’, can turn bombastic in some performances, but Bychkov finds their fervour (the Hussites lurk here) while giving the music a spiritual halo. This aura also reflects the unique warmth of the Czech Phil and its hall in the heart of Prague, the up there with the other indisputably great performances.
