This is the Czech Philharmonic? This is the orchestra
Vaclav Talich painstakingly built to be the sweetest, the strongest, the most sophisticated, and the most soulful of Czech orchestras of all time? Say it isn't so! Where are the beautiful tone, the effortless ensemble, and the heroic power of the Czech Philharmonic? Where are the depths, the heights, and the ineffably luminous lyricism of the Czech Philharmonic? Where are the greatness, the glory, and the humanity of the Czech Philharmonic?
They're not present in the performances on this set of the symphonies of
Gustav Mahler led by
Vaclav Neumann, that's for sure. Recorded between 1976 and 1983, the Czech Philharmonic's performances here are scrawny, scrappy, and shaky and nothing like
Talich's Czech Philharmonic. Listen to the thin strings in the Adagios, to the weedy winds in the Andantes, to the weak brass in the Allegros, and the frail percussion everywhere. Listen to the imprecise ensemble in the tuttis, the unfocused direction in developments, and the imbalanced balances everywhere. The responsibility, one suspects, is not so much with the orchestra as with the conductor.
Neumann was a singularly uncharismatic director whose slipshod technique and slapdash interpretations make for perhaps the most consistently unconvincing
Mahler cycle ever issued. Recorded by Supraphon in the late stereo and early digital eras, the sound is dim, small, and hollow.
For a truly great Czech interpretations of
Mahler's symphonies, try
Rafael Kubelik and the
Bavarian Radio Symphony. An ex-patriot Czech who went west when the Communists seized power,
Kubelik was long familiar with
Mahler's music and he brought his own warmly humanist point of view to the scores when he recorded them in the late '60s and early '70s. From his Bavarian musicians,
Kubelik elicited playing that was sweet, strong, and soulful even if a bit too Germanic at the climaxes, and his interpretations have the kind of passionate lyricism that's quintessentially Czech.