THREE MORE GREAT RECORDINGS

Rafael Kubelík (conductor) Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (1971)

Eloquence ELQ4800643 Rafael Kubelík’s recording of Taras Bulba was made a decade after Anωerl’s, and reflects improvements in recording technology, with a warmer, more naturally balanced sound. Interpretively, Kubelík pushes Anωerl close. No other conductor catches quite as he does the sense of doom surrounding Andrij’s love for the Polish girl in the opening movement; the reprise of their music has a tragic poignancy. The fierce, frenetic savagery he summons for Bulba’s death by fire in the finale is also unequalled, and the visionary epilogue is incandescent. If Anωerl’s coupling (the Glagolitic Mass) is unsuitable, then Kubelík’s disc – which includes the Sinfonietta and Concertino – comes strongly into the picture. It’s a darker, more ferocious view of Taras Bulba than even Anωerl’s, and runs it close for top position.

José Serebrier (conductor) Czech State Philharmonic, Brno (1995)

Reference Recordings RR2103 José Serebrier’s Taras Bulba, on a two-disc collection of Janáωek’s orchestral music for the audiophile Reference Recordings label, is by a clear distance the finest-sounding available, stunning in the breadth and depth of its spatial perspectives. Artistically it also ranks highly: Serebrier coaxes playing of slinky sensuality from the players of the excellent Brno orchestra in the love music of ‘The Death of Andrij’, and he is especially good at knitting together the successive episodes of the trickily structured finale. Nobody quite touches the special sense of sustained intensity found in Karel Anωerl’s classic interpretation. But Serebrier’s is a resplendent recording which reveals the inner workings of Janáωek’s orchestration like no other; and the sound quality is superb.

Antoni Wit (conductor) Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra (2010) Naxos 8.572695

Antoni Wit was music director of the Warsaw Philharmonic when this recording of Taras Bulba was made, and together they conjure a sound splendidly suited to Janáωek. The snorting trombones and resiny string playing as Poles and Cossacks clash in the ‘The Death of Andrij’ have weightiness and crackle, and are richly caught in Naxos’s excellently balanced recording. While lacking some of the urgency of both Anωerl and Kubelík, Wit finds nobility in the burgeoning brass and organ chorales heralding Taras’s prophecy in the concluding movement, with full-blooded, confident playing throughout the orchestra. With characterful accounts of the Lachian and Moravian Dances as coupling, Wit’s is undoubtedly a Taras Bulba to be reckoned with, and it heads the field of budget discs.