<<  -- 2 --  Roderic Dunnett    LISZTIAN VISION

But by the later pieces op. op 57, and the late l890s collection Malirske Studie (Studies of Paintings, op 56, exquisitely recorded by Kvapil on DKPCD 9149 [listen -- track 22, 0:00-0:53]), a new assurance is audible, whether in the rapt Lisztian vision of The Dance of the Blessed (after Fra Angelico's Last Judgment) or the passionate urgency of Correggio's Io and Jupiter, which probably recalls a key encounter in his deepening passion for Anezka, which was to break up Fibich's second marriage three years before his death.

As a song composer, Fibich's cosmopolitan enthusiasms (he studied abroad in Leipzig and Paris) included a fondness for Heine. The violin sonatas, piano trio and quartet and string quartets in A and G are early works, of varying weight and interest. Only the Piano Quintet (l893) dates from his mature period. His choral symphonic poem The Romance of Spring [listen -- SU 1920-2 track 6, 3:27-4:18], to a transporting, Oscar Wilde-like fairytale by Vrchlicky, shares something with the early Elgar of The Black Knight (there is a fine, if dated, Sejna recording on Supraphon l920-2 , and a more recent one by Vajnar on 3197-2); while the nocturne At Twilight [listen -- SU 1920-2 track 5, 9:48-10:48] -- from which the Viennese slow waltz-like Poème is taken, and which appears as a coupling on both these Supraphon discs, suggests the easy-going, mellifluous post-Wagnerism of, say, Raff, yet contains the odd glimmering glance forward a decade or two harmonically.

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