Janáček: Sir Charles Mackerras Conducts Janáček

If this collection had been issued by one of the so-called ‘major’ record companies, it would doubtless have been called something like The Ultimate Janáček. Supraphon being unencumbered with whizzy marketing types, they have simply called it Sir Charles Mackerras conducts Janáček, being a double album containing all of the Czech master’s significant orchestral music. Sir Charles’s name will forever be linked with the music of Janáček. His scholarship has resulted in Urtext editions of several of the operas, while his series of recordings for Decca are likely to remain the benchmark versions for many years to come. His new recording of the Sinfonietta is his third, having previously recorded it with the Vienna Philharmonic and with a pick-up orchestra in London (superbly transferred on a recent Testament CD). The fires burn just as fiercely as before; at fractionally faster tempi than either of his previous versions, he misses no opportunity to punch home this astonishing, brazen music. Schluck und Jau, Janáček’s last orchestral work, is a notable addition to Sir Charles’s discography, while his revision of the Cunning Little Vixen Suite (using Janáček’s original orchestration) is sheer bliss in the hands of the Czech Philharmonic. The majority of the selections here were recorded live; the huge weight of sound at the climaxes of the Sinfonietta doesn’t have sufficient space to expand, the spectacularly-engineered VPO/Decca recording is ideal in this respect. Nonetheless, the new Supraphon set can be warmly welcomed.

About Mackerras and Janáček

Sir Charles Mackerras, an Australian-born conductor who spent most of his career in Britain, did more than perhaps any other conductor to establish Janáček’s operas and orchestral works in the standard international repertoire outside Czechoslovakia. His scholarship extended well beyond performance, he worked directly from original source materials to produce corrected editions of several operas, undoing decades of well-meaning but distorting revisions made by earlier Czech conductors. His long relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic and, later, the composer’s own Czech Philharmonic gave him access to two very different orchestral traditions in this repertoire, both audible across his multiple recorded accounts of the same works.