For listeners who know and love the orchestral music of Czech composers Josef Suk and Leos Janácek, this disc of symphonic poems and orchestral song cycles by their contemporary countryman Vitezslav Novák will be the next logical place to go. Although the two symphonic poems In the Tatras and Eternal Longing have been recorded many times, the cycle Melancholic Songs of Love has rarely been recorded, and the cycle South Bohemian Motives has never been recorded. Like Suk and Janácek, Novák started out as a full-blown Romantic composer; unlike them, however, he stayed a full-blown Romantic and his early and late works are all cut from the same bolt of shimmering, glimmering cloth. For those unfamiliar with Novák, his In the Tatras could be said to be a sort of Bohemian Alpine symphony with less musical bombast, while his Eternal Longing could be said to be a sort of Czech Also Sprach Zarathustra with fewer philosophical pretense. In the same vein, Novák's songs could be said to be moodier Eastern European versions of Strauss' songs, particularly the Vier letzte Lieder. These performances with Douglas Bostock leading the Carlsbad Symphony with soprano Daniela Strakova in the songs are entirely successful in making the best possible case for the music, and if for some listeners they don't succeed, it's only because those listeners lacks sympathy with Novák's fin de siècle aesthetics. Classico's sound is unhappily dim and gray.
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