Suk is being reappraised slowly but the main work here is still far too little known or appreciated. This stunning performance should help redress the balance—helped by some of the best Chandos engineering I have heard in recent years this is also a fine farewell to Belohlávek as he steps down as the BBC SO’s principal conductor. © 2012 MusicWeb International

What a magnificent score Suk’s A Summer’s Tale is! By turns rapturous, ecstatic, grief-ridden and serene it is an undoubted masterpiece. This performance from a clearly inspired BBC Symphony Orchestra under their departing principal conductor Jirí Belohlávek rises to the challenge of capturing the shifting and elusive sound-world as well as any.

Suk writes for a large late romantic orchestra—with triple wind and extended brass together with two harps and piano. Certainly this makes for an exciting and powerful sound when all the forces are unleashed together but it is the refinement and skill of the orchestration that lingers in the memory. Belohlávek’s is supremely skillful at bringing out the subtle nuance of the music and his BBC players respond with playing that is rich and full or flexible and subtle as required. Again they are helped greatly by the range of the Chandos recording which allows interesting touches in the scoring to register subtly yet clearly. This is a work that reveals more delicious detail with every re-listening. If you respond to the heated emotional sound-world of Zemlinsky’s Die Seejungfrau or Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande this will appeal to you but much as I enjoy the Zemlinsky in particular I would have to say I find the Suk to be the more deeply personal and ultimately impressive work. The opening movement Voices of Love and Consolation is the most overtly romantic and exuberant and the BBCSO rise to the considerable technical challenges of the piece with virtuosic panache. The brass throughout the entire disc are a model of powerful burnished beauty and the woodwind are simply glorious. As previously mentioned this is titled Blind Musicians and originated as part of the incidental music Suk had written for a play earlier in 1907. The two cor players are named as Alison Teale and Helen Vigurs and rightly so. In the midst of playing of such quality their contribution stands out as exceptionally fine. There is a sinuous almost sensual ebb and flow to their interplay aided by richly bardic harps and similarly beautiful string solos that makes for an exceptional passage of music making which again belies the diminutive implication of its Intermezzo title. Suk manages to find both consolation and reconciliation in the final section which is simply called Night andmakes for an emotionally satisfying conclusion to the work in its own right. If this is a work you have yet to encounter and large-scale scores of the period appeal than this should be placed high on any wish-list.

The coupling on this extremely generously filled disc is the earlier Symphonic Poem Prague. From a musicological perspective it is fascinating to hear the change these losses brought about in the compositional style and vocabulary both melodic and harmonic that Suk used either side of 1904. That it is a ‘lesser’ work than A Summer’s Tale is clear but in its own right it is hugely e
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