Thanks to you and Graham for the Kubelik steer for the Dvorak Symphonies JDP.
They are pretty sensational interpretations and recordings.
I lucked into a good copy of the 9th with a recent charity shop buy of the Kubelik box set of the Slavonic Dances. Bizarrely, nestling in the box along with the expected albums was a copy of the 9th!
It’s a really outstanding performance of a Symphony that has so many fine and not so fine interpretations. Interestingly, for DG the recording is also demo standard: rich, reverberant acoustic and a natural swell to crescendos without harshness or distortion.
It made me seek out copies of the 7th and 8th.
The 8th I found is a DG Privilege which should normally put it somewhere below a full fat DG, but it sounds just as good as the 9th and the performance is also outstanding.
….though I note that this one had a different recording engineer; Heinz Wildhagen instead of Gunther Hermanns on the 8th and 9th. With my copy on my rig it sounds crowded and slightly out of control on crescendo’s with a notable reduction in air and acoustic. Anybody else find this?
Yup, that’s the one. I really hope DG does a The Original Source treatment of this one because the performance is so good, but like DGs can be, it’s a bit screechy and harsh in places. I think the near-field monitors in the recording booth at DG had blown tweeters, LOL
I also have this version, and am embraced to say I have not played it in decades, since not long after I brought it back with me from Prague in '91, when every corner in the old part of town had a Supraphon store and a ice cream cone window for carry out treats, and Vaclav Havel was running for prime minister of a country newly freed from Soviet block rule.
Replaced in 1992 by Met Life. I have Kubelik’s 7-9. I also have Dvorak cycles by Kertesz and Behlohlavek. Some of the earlier symphonies are definitely worth a listen (or more).
Istvan Kertesz made highly regarded recordings of Dvorak symphonies for Decca before he drowned at a comparatively early age (although I should say that I have never heard any of them).
In the Speakers Corner email blast last week they said it just got a repress, which surprises me because Kai Seemann told me personally that Speakers Corner is done with classical. I guess that really means they aren’t doing any new classical, but perhaps they are repressing existing titles that sell well enough to make it worthwhile.
Anyway, I ordered it right away from Elusive Disc, which I believe is the U.S. distributor for Speakers Corner.
I’m very happy to now have a copy of both Kertesz and Kubelik. Neither will supplant the other for me. The same goes for the 7th and 8th where I now have Kubelik and also Kertesz with the LSO. These are all superb performances too.
I have all of Kertesz’s Dvorak symphonies on CD, but it’s the 6th that transports me back to the Royal Festival Hall in 1965 when I heard Kertesz conducting the LSO in a performance of it. I have always thought that the sound on that CD completely captured the LSO in that odd acoustic the RFH had then.
Immortalised in ‘A Day in the Life”. The 135 flying saucers were part of the 4000 ‘holes’ manufactured in Blackburn, Lancashire. ‘Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall’.
