Suk: A Summer's Tale, Op. 29

Album review

While not quite in same league as his Asrael Symphony, Josef Suk's A Summer's Tale is the next best thing -- if one can use such lighthearted locutions to describe works of such immense tragedy. But where the Asrael is a funeral monument to Suk's young, dead wife, A Summers' Tale is a testimony to the healing powers of nature. In his 2002 recording of Asrael with the Orchester der Komischen Oper Berlin, Kirill Petrenko showed he had the right stuff as a Suk conductor -- the strength, the soulfulness, the stamina, and above all the self-control to hold the orchestra and the music together at the peaks of Suk's excruciating pain. In this 2004 performance of A Summer's Tale, Petrenko and the Berlin Orchestra are even more impressive. Asrael is an emotional per aspera ad astra symphony following the via dolorosa of Suk's bottomless grief, but A Summer's Tale is a more nuanced work that starts where Asrael ends in quiet, certain serenity. In Petrenko's performance, A Summer's Tale is nowhere near as over the edge as Asrael, but rather a deeper, more considered and more mature work. Taken together, Petrenko's Suk recordings are among the very best since Vaclav Talich's. As in Asrael, the Komischen Oper Berlin's orchestra is an incredibly fine and immensely noble ensemble and the playing here, while possibly less polished, is perhaps even more passionately committed than anything the Berlin Philharmonic could muster. The coupling of Liadov's The Enchanted Lake is surprisingly apt, wonderfully refreshing, and altogether lovely. CPO's sound is big, warm, and immediate.

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