United Kingdom Smetana: Welsh National Opera Orchestra / Tomáš Hanus (conductor). St David’s Hall, Cardiff, 29.1.2023. (PCG)
Smetana – Má vlast
It is Smetana himself who should take a lot of the blame for the truth that the entire Má vlast is so hardly ever heard. For eight years earlier than the 1882 Prague première of the cycle, he had already permitted and certainly inspired performances of the person symphonic poems that make up the work. The second poem, Vltava, taken up enthusiastically beneath the German title of Die Moldau, was already changing into well-established as a staple merchandise of fare in live performance halls all through Europe. This motion has since exercised a maintain on the repertory that successfully overshadows the remaining parts of the cycle, with solely distant competitors from the fourth, From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields. The persevering with recognition of Vltava, quoted in innumerable documentaries and even tv ads, has now eclipsed the important unity of the cycle. Outside the context of a whole efficiency, the informal listener will, for instance, make little of the life-affirming return of the Vyšehrad theme on the finish of Blaník – certainly the reference appears fairly unmotivated – and can fully miss the purpose. But stay performances of the entire cycle are a substantial rarity, at any fee outdoors Czechia.
The hyperlinks between Welsh National Opera and Czech music return to the Seventies. That was when Richard Armstrong and David Pountney launched into their cycle of the entire canon of Janáček’s main operas in collaboration with Scottish Opera, and Charles Mackerras got here to Cardiff to conduct the British première of Martinů’s The Greek Passion. Mackerras returned to the corporate not just for performances however for recordings of Janáček’s operas, together with Jenůfa and, most enterprisingly, Osud. In 1983, he additionally gave Cardiff its final likelihood to listen to the entire Má vlast with this identical orchestra. The present Czech music director of Welsh National Opera, Tomáš Hanus, has already given us his personal cycle of Janáček’s main operas (it included revivals of the Pountney productions of The Cunning Little Vixen and From the House of the Dead), culminating on this corridor final yr with a shocking efficiency of the Sinfonietta. He now topped this achievement with a brand new and certainly traditionally vital efficiency of the entire Má vlast.
The orchestra was on coruscating kind all through the work’s whirlwind progress offers nearly no time for anybody to calm down. I used to be initially stunned to find that we had been to listen to all six symphonic poems with out an interval – certainly the gamers wanted time to recuperate and collect new power earlier than the ultimate onslaught of Tábor and Blaník? – however the features in thematic coherence had been palpable, and the indefatigable strings confirmed no indicators of tiredness. Only at one level, within the galumphing march close to the start of Šárka (from bar 47), was there any attainable concern in regards to the in any other case scrupulously judged balances; and even on the level it could be the fault of the composer, who assigns his piano figurations to the unsupported strings towards staccato wind chords that right here threatened to overwhelm them. Against this momentary lapse have to be set many different felicitous moments, not least the passage later in Šárka the place the sf yawning snores of the second bassoon (bar 211) with its accompaniment of ppp strings represented to deliciously comedian impact the loud night breathing of the drunkenly slumbering warriors about to be slaughtered by the heroine’s feminine military. Another notoriously tough passage in Vltava (bar 181) – the place the low oboes lead into the delicacy of the scene with the water nymphs (which used now and again to be bowdlerised for clarinets) – was once more handled with mannequin decorum. It is uncommon in a overview to particularly praise the second gamers in a woodwind workforce, however credit score is nicely deserved by Oliver Galetta (for humour) and Emily Cockbill (for decorum).
Time and once more Hanus was content material to collaborate together with his gamers to realize the specified outcomes. During the extra frenetic codas of Šárka, Tábor and Bohemia’s Woods and Fields he merely allowed the orchestra its head because it charged in the direction of its riotous conclusion. His concern for exemplary stability was maybe finest illustrated on the very starting of Vyšehrad. Smetana’s two harp elements (which the composer specifies in a footnote could be realised by a single participant) had been really performed in unison to make sure that the illustrative bardic parts had been clearly audible, even after they got a sustained wind accompaniment later within the motion. Hanus was additionally cautious to look at the composer’s path that the peasant dance and scene with the nymphs in Vltava ought to at all times be maintained on the identical fundamental pulse, as directed within the rating, and never separated off as particular person episodes within the rondo construction.
I have to not fail to say the superb programme furnished by the WNO, handsomely illustrated in color with interval prints of related landscapes. It additionally provided detailed analyses of each the music and the programmatic parts. Branwen Thistlewood deserves credit score each for the contents and presentation. Before the live performance, Hanus gave quick and pithy observations about each the music and its autobiographical impression. He additionally drew consideration to Smetana’s anticipations of atonal music in a few of his thematic inspirations, one thing that I have to admit I had by no means recognised earlier than.
I had famous the sometimes-scanty audiences who attend the symphonic concert events at St David’s Hall on Sunday afternoons, and the stunning failure of Welsh National Opera to promote live performance seats to the substantial theatrical audiences who attend their seasons on the Millennium Centre down in Cardiff Bay. That was most definitely not the case right here. The corridor was fairly nicely packed, and it was clear from the cheers on the finish that the listeners had totally loved themselves even after confinement to their seats for a piece lasting longer than the common Mahler symphony. Maybe that was a response to the persevering with risk by Cardiff City Council to divest themselves of accountability for the corridor. One wonders how the viewers would reply to the proposals to strip out the present comfy (and costly) stalls for the availability of non permanent tiers of seats for classical concert events. At all occasions, they had been totally nicely rewarded with a efficiency by an orchestra which appears to be hitting the height of kind, if this and final autumn’s live performance outing are to be judged. This efficiency nicely repaid my persistent issues with Sunday provision of public transport in South Wales.
Paul Corfield Godfrey