8.111331 bk Talich_EU 12/12/08 1:10 PM Page 5 GREAT CONDUCTORS • VÁCLAV TALICH 8.111331 Antonín DVO¤ÁK: Slavonic Dances, Op. 46 33:58 1 No. 1 in C major 3:49 Great Conductors • Talich ADD 2EA 2826-1 - HMV C 2825 Also available 2 No. 2 in E minor 4:24 2EA 2827-1 - HMV C 2825 3 No. 3 in A flat major 4:07 2EA 2828-2 - HMV C 2831 4 No. 4 in F major 6:12 0EA 2840-1 / 2841-1 - HMV B 8437 5 No. 5 in A major 3:20 0EA 2829-1 - HMV B 8471 DVO¤ÁK 6 No. 6 in D major 4:16 2EA 2839-1 - HMV C 2831 7 No. 7 in C minor 3:29 0EA 2830-1A - HMV B 8471 Slavonic Dances 8 No. 8 in G minor 4:19 2EA 2831-1 v HMV C 2852 (Complete) Slavonic Dances, Op. 72 31:46 9 No. 1 in B major 4:05 2EA 2832-1 - HMV C 2852 8.111045 8.111237 Carnival 0 No. 2 in E minor 4:17 2EA 2833-1A - HMV C 2859 ! No. 3 in F major 3:16 Overture 0EA 2834-1 - HMV B 8511 @ No. 4 in D flat major 4:09 2EA 2835-1 - HMV C 2859 # No. 5 in B flat minor 2:31 0EA 2836-1 - HMV B 8511 $ No. 6 in B flat major 3:39 0EA 2837-1 - HMV B 8519 % No. 7 in C major 2:59 0EA 2838-2 - HMV B 8519 ^ No. 8 in A flat major* 6:49 0EA 2842-1 / 2843-1 - HMV B 8521 & Carnival Overture, Op. 92* 9:05 Czech Philharmonic Orchestra 2EA 2844-2 / 2845-1 - HMV C 2842 8.111297 8.111298 Czech Philharmonic Orchestra • Václav Talich Václav Talich Recorded 27th and *28th November, 1935 in EMI Abbey Road Studio No. 1, London Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer: Mark Obert-Thorn Historical Recordings 1935 8.111331 5 6 8.111331 8.111331 bk Talich_EU 12/12/08 1:10 PM Page 2 Great Conductors: Václav Talich (1883-1961) orchestra to the younger Kubelík and Szell. broken man. He last conducted the orchestra in to hear the percussion-instruments played so Carnival, the strings’ natural portamento lends DVORˇ ÁK: Slavonic Dances Op. 46 and Op. 72 • Carnival Overture, Op. 92 When Czechoslovakia was occupied by the concert in 1954 and in the studio the following year. discreetly and with such rhythmic exactness that lovely curves to the second theme, while in the Germans, Talich was placed in an impossible He died at Beroun on 16th March 1961. they fulfilled their proper function in the quiet interlude the delicately rustic Czech When he made these records in November 1935, organized a string quartet – he said he learnt more position. Although Talich had given up the Czech Talich and the Czech Philharmonic made their background of the picture instead of obtruding woodwinds come into their own and a beautifully Václav Talich was at the apogee of his career as the from rehearsing as guest viola with the legendary Philharmonic in 1941, Josef Goebbels made him début recording for HMV in Prague in 1929, a themselves, as they too often do, into the very inflected solo is heard from the orchestra’s great most charismatic Czech conductor in history. Bohemian Quartet than from any other activity. He ‘an offer he couldn’t refuse’, ordering him to tour complete set of Má Vlast. The visit of orchestra and front’. Neville Cardus of The Manchester Guardian leader Stanislav Novák. Talich was to return to all Overwork had caused his health to break down but became friendly with the ensemble’s second Germany with the orchestra. Talich insisted on conductor to London in 1935 for three concerts thought the Czech Philharmonic ‘played with a this music in the 1950s but these 1935 recordings he was now back on track and at the top of his form. violinist, the composer Josef Suk, and was taking Smetana’s nationalistic suite Má Vlast, provided the opportunity to document them in the warm mellowness of harmony that is seldom heard catch an immortal partnership in full flood and Sadly, events beyond his control, caused by the preparing the CPO for the première of Suk’s banned by the German occupiers, and the visit was magnificent Studio No. 1 at Abbey Road, where the even from the best of the London orchestras’. vigour. aggressive empire-building of Adolf Hitler, would symphonic poem Ripening in 1918 when the so successful that this music, almost sacred to art of 78rpm recording had been brought to its peak. Certainly the Slavonic Dances give Talich the curtail what promised to be a serene plateau in manager burst in to say that the Czechs had Czechs, was again permitted in Prague. Even so, in The 100 musicians spent Saturday 23rd November chance to show the full panoply of his skills in Tully Potter Talich’s artistic life. But for a precious few years, achieved their dream of a republic, named 1945 Talich was accused of collaboration. He there with Talich, recording a wonderful Dvofiák subtlety of rhythm and orchestral colour. In he and the orchestra with which his name was Czechoslovakia. ‘That’s all very well,’ Talich walked thirty kilometres in twelve hours from his Eighth Symphony. Next day they appeared, before a synonymous, the Czech Philharmonic, were able to typically replied, ‘but we have to rehearse.’ By home in Beroun to Prague, in the hope of disappointingly small audience, at a Palladium work harmoniously at home and tour successfully 1919 he was chief conductor but the orchestra, conducting Smetana’s Libu‰e to mark the end of the Sunday-afternoon concert, playing Dvofiák’s abroad. Posterity was to reap rich rewards, in the founded in 1896 by Dvofiák and conducted in its war, only to be barred from his own opera house. Carnival Overture and Eighth Symphony and form of superb recordings made in both Prague and early years by his pupil Oskar Nedbal, was not in His chief accuser, the critic Zdenûk Nejedly´, hated Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture. On Monday London – not just with Talich but with his younger the best of order. Talich built it up with endless Talich because he felt that the Dvofiák faction in evening Queen’s Hall was sold out for Smetana’s colleagues Rafael Kubelík and George Szell. The rehearsing and by 1922 was confident enough to Czech music had unfairly supplanted the Smetana Bartered Bride Overture, Dvofiák’s ‘New World’, orchestra’s autumn London visits, beginning in take the orchestra on a tour of Italy. He loved faction. Although Talich was a magnificent Novák’s In the Tatras, Suk’s Serenade and three of 1935, became eagerly awaited events, not only by Britain, which he first visited in 1923 as a guest conductor of Smetana’s music, including the Dvofiák’s Slavonic Dances; and an equally full the concert-going audience at Queen’s Hall but by conductor: he conducted the Scottish Orchestra a operas, he was identified with the ‘Dvofiák wing’ house on Tuesday heard Vivaldi’s D minor the HMV technicians at Abbey Road Studios, who good deal (1925-27) and in 1928 gave the London because of his closeness to Suk and Vitûzslav Concerto, Beethoven’s Fourth, songs featuring the liked working with such a well rehearsed band. première of Holst’s Egdon Heath. In 1927, at the Novák. Absolved of all charges, he returned to the enchanting soprano Jarmila Novotná, MartinÛ’s La Born in KromûfiíÏ, Moravia, on 28th May 1883, Smetana Hall in Prague, he and the orchestra National Theatre and made his last foreign trip, to Bagarre, Smetana’s Sarka and more Slavonic Talich had the classic Czech musical background: presented a programme of contemporary British Stockholm, in 1946, but was still prevented from Dances. The following day the party recorded all his father was a ‘cantor’ who started him on the music: Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro (which working with the Czech Philharmonic. He formed sixteen Slavonic Dances at Abbey Road; and on the violin at five. Aged eight, he heard Dvofiák perform stayed in the orchestra’s repertoire); Delius’s Paris; his own Czech Chamber Orchestra but when the 28th they set down the Carnival Overture. the Dumky with Ferdinand Lachner and Hanu‰ Holst’s Fugal Overture; and Vaughan Williams’s Communists took over in 1948, he was accused yet Whereas the Eighth Symphony, like Talich’s Wihan. His violin tutors at the Prague Conservatory Pastoral Symphony. Talich was a great Wagnerian again: his nemesis Nejedly´ was even more powerful later recordings of the Sixth and Seventh and the (1897-1903) were the best, Jan Marák and Otakar and one would like to have heard the all-Wagner than before. He was dismissed from the National Suk Serenade, came out on the prestige red label, ·evãík. He met his hero Dvofiák who, ever thrifty, programme that he and the Moscow Philharmonic Theatre, had to disband his chamber orchestra and, the Slavonic Dances and Carnival were put on to advised Talich to smoke cheroots rather than cigars gave in 1932, with Reizen singing Wotan’s like Nedbal in the 1920s, was exiled to Bratislava, the cheaper plum label, the dances on four twelve- to conserve his cash. In Berlin he played under Farewell and Derzhinskaya Isolde’s Liebestod. where he built up the Slovak Philharmonic (1949- inch discs and five ten-inch, the overture on a single Arthur Nikisch and was inspired to conduct but Talich also headed the Konsertföreningen Orchestra 52).