Dvorak: Symphony No. 9 “From the New World”, American Suite (Warner Classics)
Dvorak: Symphonies Nos. 7, 8, 9 (Pentatone)
★★★☆☆/★★★★☆
Comparisons in music are unfair. An ephemeral art cannot be measured and pinned, like a butterfly, to the page without risking mortal damage. Nevertheless, human beings possess critical faculties and spend much of their lives assessing whether A is preferable to B. Not necessarily better, just more apt to present circumstances.
I offer these caveats because I have been listening to Dvorak orchestral works from very different sources. Nathalie Stutzmann with the Atlanta Symphony present the American Suite, opus 98, together with the 9th symphony, From the New World.
The project marks Stutzmann’s debut on record as a symphonic conductor and the sense of moment is unmistakable. The American Suite is suffused with local pride and the ninth symphony is done with a blaze of brass that typifies a top-ten American orchestra at peak form. Stutzmann, one of the very few women presently heading a US orchestra, adds occasional tempo affectations which I find superfluous, but these are, all told, thoroughly enjoyable performances with a generic glow of American can-do.
Then along come Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and my criteria have to be adjusted. From the New World has the propulsion of a forest stream at twilight, its cor anglais solo flowing with forces of nature, seemingly untouched by human agency. Beauty is, in the ear of this beholder, most affecting when it is least manipulated. This conductor seems to do no more than permit his musicians to breathe and to play. The performances of the 7th and 8th symphonies are no less organic and the Carnival overture is an absolute cracker.
Bychkov, in a decade of leadership, has enabled the Czechs to sound absolutely themselves and completely different from all others. Among many records they have made together, this album will stand for a very long time as a signature achievement, beyond reasoned comparison.
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