Smetana: Swedish Symphonic Poems

Album review

Bedřich Smetana spent several years teaching and operating a music school in Gothenburg, Sweden, visiting frequently even after he returned to Central Europe. Smetana wrote several large works for performance by the ensembles that grew into the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra; the Festive Symphony, Op. 6, of which an excerpt brings down the curtain here, was written in Prague but failed there and found favor in Sweden. These works are not well known (there is a similar recording by the BBC Philharmonic under Gianandrea Noseda), and they demonstrate Smetana's considerable debt to Liszt, something clear from the historical record but not always easy to hear in Ma vlast. For these reasons alone, this Naxos release by the Slovak Philharmonic under Leos Svarovsky is worth hearing. The three works that precede the Festive Symphony finale are all programmatic tone poems in a Lisztian vein. Richard III does not encompass all of Shakespeare's play but is a moody evocation of the scene preceding the Battle of Bosworth. The strongest work on the album is the blood-and-guts Hakon Jarl, depicting a clash (as rendered by Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger) between the titular Viking tyrant and Christian forces led partly by Harald Bluetooth (believe it or not, the namesake of the modern wireless technology). Both groups get evocative music, and the piece would perk up any orchestral concert even if there is nothing particularly Swedish about it. The Slovak Philharmonic performances are workmanlike and the playing is clean, although there is room for more oomph. Worth the time of Smetana lovers.

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