Sunday Classics preview: A man, a river, and music that makes us all Czech

by Ken

Tomorrow we're going to be dealing with the whole of Smetana's Má Vlast (My Country). We're going to hear its six movements played by the Czech Philharmonic, divvied up among three conductors. For technical reasons, those conductors won't include Karel Ančerl (1908-1973), the orchestra's principal conductor from 1950 to 1968. The technical reasons are that while I just bought the CD transfer in Supraphon's Ančerl Gold Edition, I don't know what I did with it. Oh, it's here somewhere. I just don't know where.

So I thought tonight we'd do a quick celebration of the maestro, who was 42 when he became principal conductor of the Czech Philharmonic. We talked last night about his countryman Rafael Kubelik, who left the country after the democratic government was seized by the coaltion government's Communist members. Kubelik's self-imposed exile lasted 42 years, until the fall of the Communist government. Happily, despite severely impaired health, he lived to make an emotional return in 1990.

Not so for Karel Ančerl. When the Soviet Union crushed the Prague Spring political liberalization of Alexander Dubček in August 1968, Ančerl already had commitments to conduct the Toronto Symphony. Although he returned for concerts during the 1969 Prague Spring festival, he accepted an invitation to become music director of the Toronto Symphony.

Here he is rehearsing Smetana's Vltava (The Moldau) with the Toronto Symphony:


And here's the performance that resulted:

Slipped out of tomorrow's post, here is a program note on Vltava by W. A. Chislett:

Smetana appended an unusually detailed programme to the score of Vltava, and follows it very closely. The sources of the river are two small springs, one warm and swift (suggested by the flutes) and the other icy cold and slow (suggested by the clarinets). They are united into a small stream, and here the strings and oboe join in and give us for the first time the rich Vltava theme, which is said to derive from a folksong. The stream dances and chatters in the sunlight, passes through dark forests where a hunt is in progress, and as it widens in the plains there are wedding festivities on its banks. By moonlight the water nymphs disport themselves in the river and then the turbulent rapids of St. John are reached. After passing through the gorge of St. John, the Vltava is a wide and mighty river, rolling majestically towards Prague, and its lapping of the great Vyšehrad rock is suggested by a reference to the main theme of the earlier work. The river finally fades into the distance.

Note: VAI has a 6:10 non-imbeddable promotional clip from its video issue of the Moldau rehearsal and performance.


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