What’s Leoš Janáček’s Taras Bulba about?
A father kills his personal son, and watches his different son being executed. He himself is then burnt alive, yelling defiantly at his Polish captors.
Such is the state of affairs of Leoš Janáček’s ‘rhapsody for orchestra’ Taras Bulba, tailored from a novel by the Nineteenth-century Russian author Nikolai Gogol.
When did Janáček compose Taras Bulba and what impressed him?
The moments of savagery within the rating – there are battle scenes and a dying in all three actions – undoubtedly mirror the brutal navy circumstances in wartime Europe as Janáček composed Taras, from 1915-18. However the subject material impressed him too: in Taras, the Ukrainian Cossack warrior, he noticed a logo of resistance to the German forces threatening his homeland of Moravia, and he devoted the work to ‘our military, the armed protector of our nation’.
The work’s strongly patriotic, pro-Slavic sentiments and moments of shriekingly expressionistic scoring make Taras Bulba probably the most potent examples of Janáček’s orchestral writing.
Greatest recordings of Taras Bulba?
Karel Ančerl (conductor)
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra (1961)
Supraphon SU36672
Is there something significantly particular about Czech performers enjoying a Czech composer’s music? There actually may be, if Karel Ančerl’s (proper) fantastic account of Taras Bulba with the Czech Phil is something to go by. The distinctiveness kicks in early, with the uniquely plangent wind enjoying on the opening of ‘The Demise of Andrij’. Each cor anglais and oboe soloists use extra vibrato than may be anticipated, but it surely’s superbly inflected, and fits the keening high quality of the music.
Ančerl’s native understanding of Janáček’s spiky, rebarbative idiom is one other essential component. He is without doubt one of the few conductors to cease the brassy battle sequence in ‘The Demise of Andrij’ from turning into a blaring free-for-all. Rhythms are sharply etched, accents cleanly pointed, and a way of steadiness struck between the orchestra’s totally different sections with out sacrificing pleasure. That rhythmic acerbity is obvious once more within the slicing violin motifs which launch ‘The Demise of Ostap’, and the lean, hungry string sound Ančerl elicits from the Czech Philharmonic provides an additional edge and febrility to the agitated march music as Ostap is ushered to his execution.
The recorded sound is on the dry facet, and within the grand peroration of Taras’s prophecy turns into a contact strident. But it surely’s not sufficient to knock Ančerl’s riveting recording of Taras Bulba from its place because the most interesting at present out there.
Rafael Kubelík (conductor)
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (1971)
Eloquence ELQ4800643
Rafael Kubelík’s recording of Taras Bulba was made a decade after Ančerl’s, and displays enhancements in recording expertise, with a hotter, extra naturally balanced sound. Interpretively, Kubelík pushes Ančerl shut. No different conductor catches fairly as he does the sense of doom surrounding Andrij’s love for the Polish woman within the opening motion; the reprise of their music has a tragic poignancy.
The fierce, frenetic savagery he summons for Bulba’s dying by hearth within the finale can be unequalled, and the visionary epilogue is incandescent. If Ančerl’s coupling (the Glagolitic Mass) is unsuitable, then Kubelík’s disc – which incorporates the Sinfonietta and Concertino – comes strongly into the image. It’s a darker, extra ferocious view of Taras Bulba than even Ančerl’s, and runs it shut for high place.
José Serebrier (conductor)
Czech State Philharmonic, Brno (1995)
Reference Recordings RR2103
José Serebrier’s Taras Bulba, on a two-disc assortment of JanáΩek’s orchestral music for the audiophile Reference Recordings label, is by a transparent distance the finest-sounding out there, gorgeous within the breadth and depth of its spatial views. Artistically it additionally ranks extremely: Serebrier coaxes enjoying of slinky sensuality from the gamers of the superb Brno orchestra within the love music of ‘The Demise of Andrij’, and he’s particularly good at knitting collectively the successive episodes of the trickily structured finale.
No one fairly touches the particular sense of sustained depth present in Karel Ančerl’s basic interpretation. However Serebrier’s is a resplendent recording which reveals the inside workings of Janáček’s orchestration like no different; and the sound high quality is great.
Antoni Wit (conductor)
Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra (2010)
Naxos 8.572695
Antoni Wit was music director of the Warsaw Philharmonic when this recording of Taras Bulba was made, and collectively they conjure a sound splendidly suited to Janáček. The snorting trombones and resiny string enjoying as Poles and Cossacks conflict within the ‘The Demise of Andrij’ have weightiness and crackle, and are richly caught in Naxos’s excellently balanced recording.
Whereas missing a few of the urgency of each Ančerl and Kubelík, Wit finds the Aristocracy within the burgeoning brass and organ chorales heralding Taras’s prophecy within the concluding motion, with full-blooded, assured enjoying all through the orchestra. With characterful accounts of the Lachian and Moravian Dances as coupling, Wit’s is undoubtedly a Taras Bulba to be reckoned with, and it heads the sphere of price range discs.
