Orchestral Works Vol.2 -Taras Bulba, Violin Concerto, etc : Gardner / Bergen Philharmonic, Ehnes(Vn)(Hybrid)

The Bergen Philharmonic and conductor Edward Gardner are featured once again on this second volume in the Chandos label's series devoted to the orchestral works of Leo Jancek. The repertoire on this disc includes some of the composer's greatest programmatic pieces. Unsurprisingly, the first piece featured here is Jealousy - his first declared piece of program music, originally written to preface the opera Jenufa but never included in any production of it during his lifetime. Both The Ballad of Blank and The Fiddler's Child (also known as a 'ballad for orchestra') are characterized by the use of musicals symbols reflecting the Czech poems on which the pieces are based and also some of the composer's personal reflections and responses. The one-movement Violin Concerto, The Wandering of a Little Soul, is a more mysterious piece, with uncertainties surrounding the title, date of creation, and the goals of it's composition. Milo tedron and Leo Faltus, using Jancek's sketches, reconstructed the version recorded here, in similar fashion to the composer's unfinished Danube symphony. An interpretation of the famous tale by Gogol, Taras Bulba (1915) was Jancek's most substantial orchestral work to that time. It is inflected with folk dances, battle and horse-riding music, and suffering and love, all brought to a grandiloquent apotheosis in orchestration of almost cinematic vividness. Gardner's way with Jancek's music is... pretty persuasive. Chandos have recorded the orchestra in warm but well-detailed and well-focused sound. (MusicWeb Int'l on V1)