LISZTIAN VISION

In the first of an occasional series
on East European music and opera,
RODERIC DUNNETT reviews the
music and recordings of Zdenek Fibich

<< Continued from last week

Probably the most widely celebrated item of Fibich's output nowadays, the Poème apart, is his  extensive  series  of Moods, Impressions and Reminiscences (Nalady, dojmy a upominky), recently recorded in a first-class series of recordings by the Slovak pianist Marian Lapsansky (on Supraphon, in full, 0188-0191 and 3249-3255) and (a well-judged selection) by the refinedly sensitive Radoslav Kvapil [listen -- track 4, 0:00-0:44] as part of Unicorn-Kanchana's valuable Czech Music series (DKPCD 9149). These works span the 1890s, and serve not just as a slightly fanciful diary of his growing relationship with his pupil and subsequent librettist, Anezka Sulcova (Schulzová), l8 years his junior, but -- as importantly -- of his own emerging style. The op 41 series is markedly under the influence of Schumann and his predecessors; and even the later series, like Dvorák's Silhouetty or some of their Russian and Polish contempories, seem slightly hidebound by the early and mid- l9th century : Florestan and Eusebius never feel far away.

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