Supraphon SU 3828-2, 63:25 (Distrib. Qualiton) ****:
The art of Vaclav Talich (1883-1961) continues to thrive with the Supraphon Special Edition dedicated to issuing many formerly suppressed performances, here including some rare Wagner inscribed 9-11 April 1953, just after Talich left Bratislava and the Slovak Philharmonic after many stormy years of Communist-imposed exile. We hear Czechoslovakia’s greatest musical patriot in a deeply resonant inscription of Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod, a performance that will reach white heat before the ivy and the vine intermingle for eternity. Originally issued on a short-lived Panton LP, the Wagner was on one of two such discs, the other devoted to Dvorak and Smetana.
Talich’s love for Russian music is well documented, not so much on disc but in the survival of his musical programs beginning in Russia, where he first conducted in the spring of 1906. “You know nothing but you are a conductor!” exclaimed one of the Tbilisi musicians. By the time of this Pathetique rendition 8-11 July 1953, Talich knew plenty. He had been offered the post of Principal Conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic in 1933! Listen to the dialogue between flute and bassoon (over running strings and chugging basses) in the opening movement. The shattering chord which opens the Allegro section will lift you off your feet. Whether to liken Talich to Mengelberg or to Mitropoulos is irrelevant–and I recall pianist Ivan Moravec made the inevitable comparison to Furtwaengler–the combination of orchestral virtuosity and harmonic sympathy creates a demonic, driving precision, an overpowering emotional crisis. Clarinet and tympani make this blistering movement a sinfonia concertante all their own.
The 5/4 Allegro con grazia throbs with balletic mysticism, splendid cello and wind sonority. The middle section assumes a character less melancholic and more that of a dirge, violas and tympani emanating a grim determinism. We hear the same falling scale that haunts Un Bal from Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique. Trumpets and woodwinds rule for the mighty Allegro molto vivace, whose surging surface betrays a world of pain beneath in the jabbing string metrics. Bold, brilliant articulation of the string pizzicati and woodwind staccati. Curiously, the dispirited finale, the self-immolation of the Adagio lamentoso, shares a sound concept not so far from Mozart’s Grand Partita for Winds. The string stretti, the fixated horn riffs, all point in execution to Talich’s intense love for Mahler as well as Tchaikovsky, the former legacy denied us, no thanks to an ungrateful Soviet system of musical politics. What was Moravec’s rejoinder to my skepticism of the cabal against Talich? “Well, they assassinated Gandhi, didn’t they?”
— Gary Lemco
