The best recording
Karel Ančerl (conductor)
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
Supraphon SU 36842
Not a name immediately associated with Janáček, Otto Klemperer was largely responsible for promoting the composer outside Czechoslovakia and he conducted the New York and Berlin premières of the Sinfonietta in 1928. His German Expressionist view of the work with the Concertgebouw Orchestra (1951) is more than just a historic musical document. However, it was the Pro Arte Orchestra’s pioneering recording of 1959 in all-important stereo, the first of the Australian Charles Mackerras’s three accounts, which alerted music-lovers and record companies to Janáček’s genius, and today the catalogue boasts a healthy number of Sinfonietta recordings.
Karel Ančerl’s 1961 recording for the Czech Supraphon label was one of the first to enter the lists, setting a standard in terms of performance that has not been surpassed. An Auschwitz survivor, Ančerl succeeded Rafael Kubelík as chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic in 1950 and, of the triumvirate of great Czech conductors who stood before the CPO from 1918-68 – Talich, Kubelík, Ančerl – he was the most progressive. Initially resistant to his exacting demands and adventurous repertoire, the orchestra went on to achieve international renown as one of the finest European ensembles to emerge after World War II.
In this incandescent account, Ančerl’s exceptional qualities as a conductor are everywhere apparent: an inevitability of purpose, an instinctive feel for the right tempos, a mastery of orchestral balance, texture and colour, and the sheer love of making music at the very highest level with colleagues he revered and who, in turn, revered him. On this recording, listen out for the characteristic Czech woodwind timbre of the pre-Glasnost era in all its rustic glory. Shattering the fond illusions of many listeners, it later transpired that their distinctive sound was simply down to antiquated instruments, but sub-standard kit or not, the winds are stunning throughout, whether trilling like nightingales or screaming like banshees on steroids. There is also a modicum of vibrato from the brass, another characteristic missing from today’s more homogenous-sounding CPO.
Expect, too, to be swept along in a torrent of glorious sound from an orchestra that has this music coursing through its veins. Very well recorded in the warm acoustic of Prague’s Rudolfinum, this phenomenal account has easily stood the test of time.
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