Dvorak's Symphonic Poems have a tendency to be long, The Golden Spinning Wheel isn't far off half an hour long, but unlike say Tone Poems, which capture a mood and a visual feeling for something, Dvorak's works here are like plays without words, just the music to set the scene, there's 'dialogue' in the pages of the score as it were, sometimes i wish there were cue points in recordings to explain exactly what's going on and when, and with this double disc set, all the best works are conveniently brought together in one package, i played this early in my Blog [28th May 2010].
Zdenek Kosler was a Czech conductor, he died in 1995, he made these recordings in 1981 & 1982, now the front cover is a thing of rare beauty [by Vladimir Baca], a picture of a tree, the sun peeking through the branches, a nice study of the trunk, and it has that backlit quality to it, the lettering and logo add to the finished product, a superb visual statement.
On this listen i was wowed at how fantastic The Golden Spinning Wheel sounded,.
Here's Carlos Kalmar conducting The Golden Spinning Wheel on YouTube.
