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As the grim fate of a Cossack father and his sons are portrayed in one of Janáωek’s most graphic orchestral scores, Terry Blain selects the most powerful recordings

Terry Blain names the finest recordings of Janáωek’s Taras Bulba; plus, what to try next

Afather kills his own son, and watches his other son being executed. He himself is then burnt alive, yelling defiantly at his Polish captors. Such is the scenario of Leo⌃ Janáωek’s ‘rhapsody for orchestra’ Taras Bulba, adapted from a novel by the 19th-century Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. The moments of savagery in the score – there are battle scenes and a death in all three movements – undoubtedly reflect the brutal military conditions in wartime Europe as Janáωek composed Taras, from 1915-18. But the subject matter inspired him too: in Taras, the Ukrainian Cossack warrior, he saw a symbol of resistance to the German forces threatening his homeland of Moravia, and he dedicated the work to ‘our army, the armed protector of our nation’. The work’s strongly patriotic, pro-slavic sentiments and moments of shriekingly expressionistic scoring make Taras Bulba one of the most potent examples of Janáωek’s orchestral writing.