Why Such a Dearth of Dvorak?

Among the abiding musical mysteries of our time is the lack of appreciation of one of the most accessible, likable and consistently inspired of Romantic composers: Antonin Dvorak. The biggest-name conductors resolutely refuse to explore the prolific Czech’s output beyond the barest handful of works. The enterprising musicians who do bother are infrequent visitors to our part of the world and when they do come, Dvorak isn’t part of their baggage. Not even the touring Czech chamber groups, hardly strangers to our stages, offer much Dvorak, perhaps under the impression that we get as much of it as the folks back home do.

Yet audience reaction to the odd gem that does slip through is never less than hugely enthusiastic, as it must be for any supreme inventor of melody, master orchestrator and the sort of canny showman who virtually builds ovations into his scores. It’s almost comical then that when JoAnn Falletta programs Dvorak’s marvelous Sixth Symphony with her Long Beach Symphony it assumes the proportions of an act of faith rather than being merely a wise and logical move.

It was once the case that popular taste was reflected in what was recorded and, later, that recordings made a profound impression on live programming. In the case of Dvorak neither seems to be true since recordings of his music are numerous beyond what anyone could have imagined a quarter-century ago, when only a small minority of listeners was aware of the fact that Dvorak composed nine rather than five symphonies and as many string quartets as Beethoven.

All this by way of introduction to yet another batch of Dvorak recordings offering the listener opportunity to experience melodic revelations and for impresarios to bemoan the dearth of such unhackneyed, ear-catchingly glorious music on their programs.

Conductor Libor Pesek, who paid a brief (Dvorak-less) visit to the Los Angeles Philharmonic last season, is working his way through a cycle of his countryman’s symphonies for Virgin Classics.

The latest installments are the youthfully overreaching, Wagner-impregnated Third Symphony, in E-flat, Opus 10, coupled with the mature and pure-Slavonic “Scherzo capriccioso” and “Carnival” Overture (90797), and the Fifth Symphony, in F, Opus 76, one of those rowdy, dance-filled Czech marvels over which audiences, were they given the opportunity, would go wild with delight. Its companion piece is the more subdued but hardly less attractively folksy “Czech” Suite, Opus 39 (90769).

Pesek leads with terrific brio as well as a loving ear for instrumental detail. His two orchestras, the Czech Philharmonic and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, respond vigorously, with a becoming touch of bucolic roughness in each instance.

Mariss Jansons, who has also put in appearances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and is shortly to lead the Leningrad Philharmonic here, offers the Fifth Symphony as well, with the “Scherzo capriccioso” and the darkly dramatic “Othello” Overture, another of the composer’s powerful, all-but-ignored late works. All are zestfully, idiomatically directed and alertly executed by the Oslo Philharmonic (EMI/Angel 499995).

By way of contrast, Andre Previn seems a disinterested outsider looking in on the “New World” Symphony and “Carnival” in his latest recording with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (Telarc 80238).

While there may not be much to seek out in this hyper-familiar material, it remains difficult to recall a conductor who brings less enthusiasm, less rhythmic definition to these scores than Previn does.

Telarc’s uncharacteristically tubby sonics (the recording was made in Royce Hall last April) fail to capture the distinctive sound of the Philharmonic, excepting perhaps the dark sheen of its cellos.

The London-based Chilingirian Quartet, recent visitors to the Southland, is--one hopes--working its way through a Dvorak quartet cycle for the Chandos label. Its latest release pairs the lush, endlessly tuneful and harmonically imaginative Quartets in E-flat, Opus 51, and in C, Opus 61 (8837)--music that once experienced in such vivacious, polished and idiomatic performances as these should remain in the head and heart forever.

A word, too, for the latest reissue of the celebrated interpretation of Dvorak’s Cello Concerto by Pablo Casals and the Czech Philharmonic under George Szell, recorded in Prague in 1937 (EMI/References 63498). The transfers from 78 r.p.m. project Casals’ sumptuous tone and the incisive attack--notably in regard to the solo wind playing--of Szell’s orchestra with a clarity and presence barely suggested in prior remasterings.

The 75-minute-long, mid-priced CD further contains Casals’ 1945 Elgar Cello Concerto and Bruch’s “Kol Nidrei,” recorded in 1936.