Kovařovic, Bořkovec, Kaprálová: Forgotten Czech Piano Concertos

Album review

One might wonder whether these three piano concertos are known in Czech lands, but it is the Czech Republic's own Supraphon label that has designated them forgotten Czech piano concertos, and one can take them at their word. Perhaps the best-known composer is the tragically short-lived Vítězslava Kaprálová (1915-1940), who has received some attention from performers seeking to revive music by women. She wrote this Piano Concerto in D minor, Op. 7, as a graduation piece when she was 20, and it is extraordinary. Sample the outer movements. which are largely in anything but D minor, and one may well agree that pianist Marek Kozák has done a real service by reviving it here (it has been recorded only once before, by a university ensemble). The Kaprálová is framed by concertos from Karel Kovařovic (1862-1920), whose Piano Concerto in F minor, Op. 6, is apparently receiving its recorded premiere, and Pavel Bořkovec (1894-1972). Kovařovic, a student of Zdeněk Fibich, offers a typically shaped late Romantic work into which the composer injects a high level of virtuosity, and the Bořkovec concerto of 1949 is a mixture of French neoclassicism and Russian styles, a heady evocation of those last days when Czechoslovakia could look toward the West. It was included on a pair of turn-of-the-century recordings by conductor Karel Ančerl but apparently hasn't been recorded since then. Nothing here is less than enjoyable, and the interactions among Kozák, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, and conductor Robert Jindra are confident and clean. The album made classical best-seller lists in early 2024.

© James Manheim /TiVo