United Kingdom Smetana: Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra / Jac van Steen (conductor). Portsmouth Guildhall, 25.1.2024. (CK)
Smetana – Má vlast
What a pleasure to be listening to the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra once more, greater than sixty years after I first did so (in Weston-Tremendous-Mare, beneath Charles Groves and Constantin Silvestri). And an additional pleasure to listen to the entire of Smetana’s set of six symphonic poems. Performances of the second, Vltava, are frequent sufficient; however although the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra introduced the entire set to the BBC Proms just a few years in the past, they don’t seem to be precisely staple fare amongst British orchestras. The one positive technique to encounter them is by going to Prague in Could, the place they open the Spring Competition yearly.
I think about that the magical, once-upon-a-time harp sounds that usher us into Vyšehrad, the opening symphonic poem, should fall on Czech ears moderately because the hushed introduction to On the Stunning Blue Danube does on Austrian ones at Vienna’s New 12 months’s Day Live performance. It’s a marvellous opening, setting the tone for the entire piece – stately, ceremonious, expressive of dignity and nationwide pleasure, tinged with a way that these are a matter of reminiscence solely; lengthy gone. There was positive, expressive string enjoying, solemn harps and horns; the orchestral sound was thrilling on the music’s zenith, and most shifting on the finish because the imaginative and prescient fades.
Vltava wound its manner via its picturesque landscapes as beguilingly as ever: I notably loved the vividly characterised village polka and the beautiful, veiled high quality of the strings because the moonlight performs on the water and the nymphs dance. The St John’s Rapids have been suitably alarming, with the piccolo shrieking above the hubbub. Šárka adopted, the shortest of the six, and maybe the one most harking back to a Liszt tone poem. The orchestra relished its tight narrative of affection, betrayal and dying: an affecting clarinet and sighing cellos portrayed Šárka’s (pretended) emotions, and maybe these of her lovestruck sufferer. After the temporary however heady love scene and the following celebration, low bassoons recommended the loud night breathing of the partied-out warriors – a pleasant second. The concluding slaughter was vividly enacted by splendidly strident trombones because the music appeared virtually to spin uncontrolled. It was most likely sensible to insert an interval at this level, in order that we – and maybe the gamers – may get better.
The primary classical music I used to be ever given was a 10-inch LP with Vltava on one aspect and From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields on the opposite. I’ve at all times liked this piece. As a substitute of presenting us with a picture-postcard depiction of pure magnificence, the opening thrusts us into the open air, the place a robust wind is blowing via the bushes: we’re swept up in an virtually Tapiola-like turbulence. It was magnificently performed right here. Oboes and bassoons launched a sleek tune, tiptoeing between a chorale and a people dance; excessive, spectral violins led a fugal passage for the strings; and so we reached the great, suave melody that stands for Nature itself (which should be as well-known because the Vltava tune). It appeared to me that the orchestral enjoying reached the heights right here, proper via to the jubilant, stamping polka finale.
And so to Tábor and Blaník, the linked actions that finish Smetana’s design with a meditation on the heroism and tragedy of his nation’s Hussite previous. Rigidity was fantastically maintained from the ominous opening of Tábor, with forceful timpani and brass: their stark motif – the primary 4 notes of the Hussite chorale – appears to look ahead to Janáček’s Overture Žárlivost (Jealousy), and maybe Káťa Kabanová (Janáček got here up together with his personal tackle the legend 40 years later in The Ballad of Blaník). The enjoying was vivid and gripping, the chorale itself delivered with huge conviction, and the cellos and double basses digging in powerfully to the shut. Loads of thrilling enjoying in Blaník too, although the spotlight – one of many highlights of the entire night – was the pastoral duet for oboe and echoing horn, joined by different woodwind voices to weave a smooth tapestry of sound on the hillside above the sleeping warriors.
Vltava will at all times be welcome in our live performance halls by itself: however so ought to the entire set, particularly in performances reminiscent of this, the place the wonderful Jac van Steen was capable of keep a way of bigger motion whereas guaranteeing that the numerous particulars of Smetana’s music have been heard with most readability. The final, lesser-known symphonic poems right here turned a real fruits; the ending was stirring and uplifting as a result of it bore not solely its personal weight however the weight of all the things that had gone earlier than. Smetana’s triumph, in fact; however van Steen’s too, and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s. I ponder if I’ll ever have the chance to listen to how different performances measure up: in the meantime I’m very grateful to have heard this one.
Chris Kettle
