Octo_Russ

Dvorak - Symphonic Poems [Jarvi-Scottish National Orchestra] 

I listened to these two discs over two days, disc one yesterday, and disc two today, it's amazing how ahead of his time Dvorak was, and it's a wonder why more Composers don't write 'stories without words', some of these Poems are quite long [nearly half an hour], and it's a little hard to fit the story to what's happening in the music, maybe some cue points would help, these Symphonic Poems are ingenious, throughout the music we find certain instruments assigned to certain characters, the bass clarinet to the Noon Witch for example, or certain musical motifs to certain actions, the more you listen to the music, the more you can follow the storyline, but even without knowing the stories at all, it's still great music that makes sense, it's like film music separated from the film, it can still stand up to musical satisfaction without the visual prop, and Dvorak writing music that doesn't need a four movement model like the Symphony does, casts his musical ideas all in one piece of music, these 'stories' are great.

Neeme Jarvi is Estonian, he's now 75 and lives in America, he made these recordings separately for individual discs coupled with a Symphony apiece, but they make a great two disc boxed set here, so these recordings were made between 1986-1987, the front cover artwork is by Clare Melinsky, again each of the four separate illustrations came with the individual discs, but they make a nice quartet of colourful illustrations here, nicely boxed on a grey background, the lettering is well done, i like the symmetry of the whole thing.

Here's Tomas Netopil conducting The Golden Spinning Wheel on YouTube.