Judging by the works of his American period, it does not seem that the great Bohemian composer Antonin Dvorák was not especially inspired by our great land. Of the works he composed in the United States, Dvorák seems most inspired in the works he wrote while living in a Bohemian enclave in Iowa. His American Cantata is patriotic claptrap, his American Suite is Bohemian nostalgia, his Symphony "From the New World" is Gilded Age flapdoodle, and he never bothered to finish the Hiawatha opera. What's needed to make Dvorák's American work is the same thing that's needed to make any of Dvorák's work: a healthy dose of good, old-fashioned Bohemian ethnicity. And that's just what Libor Pesek delivers in these performances of the American Suite and the Symphony "From the New World" with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. One the very best living Czech conductors, Pesek was able to turn the already superb Liverpool orchestra into honorary Bohemians while he was their music director and together they recorded many wonderfully evocative discs of Bohemian music including a complete cycle of the Dvorák symphonies. In this reissue, Pesek has wisely coupled Dvorák's two most American orchestral works and while neither performance raises the works to the exalted level of Dvorák's more ethnic creations, they both do everything possible with the material available. Their "From the New World" is raw and powerful, a little crude in the Scherzo and Finale and a bit sentimental in the Largo, but nevertheless effective. Their American Suite is sweet and exuberant, a little racous in the the dance movements, a bit heart-on-the-sleeve in the slow movements, and a lot bombastic in the outer movements, but somehow moving. There are better recordings of the symphony but no better recording of the Suite. Virgin's sound is dry but warm.
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