Smetana - Ma vlast - V Talich, Czech Phil (1939, live radio) [Philidor; FLAC]

Smetana's Ma vlast is well known, but this particular version of it comes with an interesting story attached. A few months before this live radio broadcast of a concert in June, 1939, the Nazis invaded and conquered what was then Czechoslovakia. It was rumored that this concert would be cancelled, and the public passed off with a tale of sickness. Instead, it was allowed to go ahead.

Talich was to commercially record Ma vlast three times. The first, in 1929, is a very old-fashioned reading, rather sloppy, with lots of portamenti. His 1941 reading, by contrast, was fast and lacking in a lot of detail. The 1954 recording of his, on the other hand, has been judged one of the great Ma vlasts, due to its phrasing, inevitability, and sustained dramatic tension. This live performance in 1939 is just a shade more spontaneous than that 1954 one, but otherwise very similar in interpretation.

The audience applauded after every movement, unusually, and at the end, they went literally wild. Just as the noise starts dropping off and some members begin to rhythmically chant their approval, others spontaneously broke into an unaccompanied version of the national anthem. The conductor and orchestra joined in. Following that, the audience again roared its approval, before the radio faded out.

And some say classical music is dull.

The recording was captured on what was for the time very advanced and expensive equipment in Oslo, using the relatively new sound-on-film (which would evolve into commercial tape recording) technique. Oslo had thousands of these, most of which were subsequently dumped; for some reason, this tape wasn't. The intro and outro announcements are given in Czech and French, because the broadcast was also being relayed to France.

Beyond that, all I can suggest is, set aside your expectations of great modern sound, and enjoy.


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