Recording of the Month
This take on Dvo ák and Martin by Ivo Kahánek and the Bamberg Symphony is up there with the greatest, says John Allison
Dvo ák and Martin
Piano concertos
‘Light-fingered in the finale, Ivo Kahánek makes a very special case for Dvo ák’s underrated Piano Concerto’
Dvo ák • Martin
Dvoˇrák: Piano Concerto in G minor; Martinu˚:
Piano Concerto No. 4, ‘Incantation’
Ivo Kahánek (piano);
Bamberg Symphony Orchestra/ Jakub Hr a
Supraphon SU 4236-2 59.24 mins There is no higher praise possible than to say that the spirit of Rudolf Firku n hovers over this new release. That greatest of all Czech pianists was a consistent champion of Dvo ák’s Piano Concerto, recording it many times, and it was also for him that Martin composed his Third and Fourth Concertos. Ivo Kahánek’s new versions are worthy of standing in this company, and his account of the Dvo ák certainly asks the question again: why does this exhilarating work remain so underrated?
Some pianists shy away from its virtuosic challenges, conscious that its difficulties are not always obvious to the listener, but this performance places the prodigiously lyrical work on the border (like so much of Dvo ák’s music) between Slavonic and Austrogerman tradition. Beethoven finds a Bohemian echo, both in the piano’s glinting textures and in the unique warmth of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, which was set up in 1946 with displaced musicians from east of the German border, clearly flourishing today under its chief conductor Jakub Hr a.
Underrated it may seem, especially when you hear a performance such as this, but the concerto is admittedly far from a ‘perfect’ work. It dates from 1878, early in Dvo ák’s output, and in a well-meaning attempt to boost its chances the Czech piano pedagogue Vilém Kurz revised the solo part. Some recordings
(including Firku n ’s earlier versions) use this, though not those of Sviatoslav Richter (studio and live), the work’s other great exponent. It should hardly need saying that today Dvo ák’s original solo part is favoured, and Kahánek makes a very special case for it: his scrupulous attention to the dynamic markings results in a clear-textured performance of rare delicacy. He is lightfingered in the finale, but not before he and the orchestra have conjured up a slow movement of magical beauty.
Kahánek, now 40, has lived with this Martin concerto for more than half his career, and performed it at the 2007 BBC Proms. Together with Hr a he ensures that the music lives up to its title, Incantations: there is certainly a feeling of spells being cast here. The concerto belongs with such other late Martin works as the Sixth Symphony and his final opera, The Greek Passion, in which the composer was searching
Kahánek and the orchestra conjure up a slow movement of magical beauty
for some sort of life-meaning. Whatever he meant by alluding to its ‘weird story, all “magic”’, his idealism comes through in its ecstatic closing pages. Today regarded among the composer’s most singular and important works, it is now appreciated for its unconventional twomovement structure.
A strong sense of Czech surrealism is evident too, yet everything adds up coherently thanks to Kahánek’s command of its fascinating sonorities.
Like Bartók, Martin saw the piano here primarily as a percussion instrument, and his writing calls for the full pianistic armoury, a challenge to which Kahánek effortlessly rises. If Hr a occasionally seems to underplay the ‘tug’ of Martin ’s cadences, perhaps he is simply allowing this magnificent music to flow.
PERFORMANCE ★★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★