Josef Suk : Asrael - Krejči: Serenata

Album review

It should go without saying that the keystone of this record is the monumental Asraël, the masterpiece of a sadly little-known composer, Josef Suk. In reality, Suk was the "fifth man" of the great Czech circuit, alongside Smetana, Dvořák (his step-father, incidentally), Martinů and Janáček, but this side of the Vltava, he remains rather obscure. Asraël dates from 1904 to 1906, a tragic period in the life of the composer: he lost his step-father, and then his beloved young wife. The three first movements are dedicated, posthumously, to the former, and the final two movements to the latter. The listener will wait in vain for respite in this sublime, agonised, funereal, apocalyptic, desperate work, where tonality breaks out towards the first glimmerings of what Janáček will develop rather later; only in the final minutes do we hear a peaceful choral section, in a changeover of harmonies that moves from a deep growl to a celestial sharpness, which rather recalls the end of Also sprach Zarathustra by Strauss. Azraël, the reader will recall, is the angel of death in certain Jewish, Muslim and Sikh traditions. Here, the great Karel Ančerl leads a manifestly transformed Südwestfunk Orchestra of Baden-Baden. To complement the programme, one may also see another Czech composer, Iša Krejčí (1904-1968), a neoclassicist, whose career as a conductor was surely somewhat overshadowed by his work as a composer. His Serenata from 1950 rather recalls shades of Jean Françaix (and other French composers of the same ilk, like, Ibert or Sauguet): a subtle, spiritual discourse, with sharp orchestral and harmonic writing. © SM/Qobuz