From Amazon.co.uk
A powerful coupling which no lover of late-romantic orchestral spectacle will want to miss. A "musical poem" was how Josef Suk described his 1907-9 masterpiece
A Summer's Tale, the second in the series of four large-scale compositions he penned after the double-whammy of the deaths of his father-in-law Dvor´k and wife Otylka. Both the opening movement ("Voices of Life and Consolation") and fourth-movement scherzo ("In the Power of Phantoms") show that the demons so painfully and movingly exorcised in
A Summer Tale's predecessor, the shattering
Asrael Symphony of 1905-6, have not been entirely banished after all, engendering a lingering unease that not even the wonderfully serene final movement ("Night") can quite dispel. The remaining two movements--the unforgettable heat-haze of "Noon" and melancholic strains of "Blind Musicians"-- are scored with breathtaking originality and imagination. Not surprisingly, Sir Charles Mackerras and the Czech PO prove hugely eloquent advocates of Suk's heartwarming inspiration, and if Libor Pesek's outstanding RLPO version on Virgin Classics is by no means outclassed, Mackerras has the sizeable advantage of a spick-and-span performance of the adorable
Fantastic Scherzo (1903-4). The Decca recording is truly demonstration-worthy in its sumptuous realism.
--Andrew Achenbach
