Search - Antonin Dvorak :: Dvorak: American Suite; Czech Suite; Overtures; Tone Poems

Uh....yeah

Timothy Mikolay | Pittsburgh, PA | 05/01/2010

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I'll cut to the chase right away. This is good Dvorak, but there is much better going on elsewhere other than what Pesek offers here. The American Suite, while sentimental and bit moody, is totally lacking any discernible excitement. Dorati's with the Royal Philharmonic is the best.



In Nature's Realm is just not in good hands here. Pesek either doesn't or cannot get his orchestra to achieve any kind of momentum and thus the music just plods along.



Another beef I have with the confusing credits of this album specifies performances by the Czech Philharmonic, especially the Scherzo Capriccioso. Not only is this not true (I have Pesek's Scherzo on the Virgin cassette release and the same orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Phil., is performing it on this CD), the Czech orchestra only performs the Czech Suite in this album. I verified this using iTunes.



The only reason I bought this album is because I expected to listen to more than one work performed the Czech Phil. 85 percent of this album is performed by the Royal Liverpool Phil.



The Czech Suite is well done, surpassing this album's other selections in musicality, but Pesek puts the work to sleep to boring effect.



If you like your Dvorak to sound like elevator music, then this album is for you. Beyond this assertion, I cannot find any reason to recommend buying it."