For listeners who already know and love the late Romantic orchestral works of Bohemian composers Smetana and Dvorák and who are looking for the next closest thing, these 1998 recordings by Douglas Bostock leading the Carlsbad Symphony Orchestra of three works by their lesser known contemporary countryman Zdenek Fibich will be most welcome. Two of the works, the early symphonic poem Othello after Shakespeare's tragedy and the late suite Impressions from the Countryside, receive their world-premiere recordings here, while the third, Toman and the Wood Nymph, has only rarely been recorded before. Influenced less by Wagner than Schumann and sounding less Czech than Austrian, Fibich's music is less individualistic than Smetana's and less inspired than Dvorák's, but still entertaining enough when persuasively performed. Bostock, who had already contributed a dedicated cycle of Carl Nielsen's symphonies, turns in equally dedicated performances here. The Carlsbad Symphony, while clearly a German provincial orchestra with all the raw tone and rough earnestness that entails, gives whatever it has to the music and, thankfully, the music asks for no more than that. Classico's sound is unfortunately distant and bland.
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