Kathryn Stott - Dreams: Kathryn Stott plays Bedrich Smetana (2007)

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Kathryn Stott - Dreams: Kathryn Stott plays Bedrich Smetana (2007)

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Filling a gap in the nineteenth century piano repertoire that many listeners would not have suspected was there, this excellent 2006 disc by English pianist Kathryn Stott of piano music by Bohemian composer Bedrich Smetana admirably serves its purpose. Opening with the half-hour-long, six-movement cycle Dreams and closing with several piquant Czech Dances, the program shows Smetana to have been a composer not only of ethnic creations but of virtuoso piano music in the Liszt mold as well. While there have been other excellent recordings of these works before, they have always been by Czech pianists who seemed to have instinctively grasped the specific rhythmic accent of Smetana's music, and this recording proves that you don't have to be Czech to play Smetana. Stott clearly has the big technique to tackle the extreme difficulties of the Concert Étude in C major and the more extravagantly virtuosic movements of Dreams, but she also has the sensitivity to handle the sweetness of "On the Sea Shore – a memory" and "Faded Happiness" (from Dreams) and the rhythmic verve to dance through the Fantasia on Czech Folksongs and the Czech Dances. Produced and edited by Rachel Smith and engineered by Jonathan Cooper and Paul Quilter, the sound of this Chandos disc is big, full, and deep. While there are good reasons for trying Czech pianists' recordings of these works, anyone hearing Stott's recording will be well served.

Review by James Leonard, Allmusic.com

Smetana's reputation primarily rests on his operas, orchestral works and chamber music, yet he also wrote prolifically for the piano, both in his early years as a concert virtuoso and late in life after deafness had set in and larger forms began to elude him. Given his importance, one inevitably wonders why his piano music is so rarely played, and so this impressive pair of discs, released simultaneously, allows us to form some kind of opinion. Their aims are different, however. Jitka Cechova's Supraphon album, part of an ongoing survey of Smetana's piano output, focuses on works from his late period. On Chandos, meanwhile, Kathryn Stott presents us with a cross-section of music from his entire career.

As a performer, Smetana was noted for his interpretations of Chopin and Liszt, and both loomed large in his imagination when he came to write for the piano. Cechova's programme consists of the two sets of Czech dances, dating from 1877 and 1879, together with a clutch of lesser, albeit stylistically similar, pieces. The first set does for the polka what Chopin did for the mazurka, and there are strong Chopinesque overtones in the elaborate tracery with which Smetana surrounds his themes. The second is more overtly Lisztian, transforming genuine folk melodies with titles like The Bear, Little Onion and The Astride Dance into bravura concert studies. Stott, though including three of the Dances, takes the ambitious 1875 cycle Dreams as her main work. The subject matter, ranging over Czech life and lore, invites comparison with Ma Vlast, Smetana's major orchestral cycle. The influence of Chopin and Liszt is again detectable, however, and is even more apparent in the early works Stott includes, most notably the Fantasia on Czech Folk Songs, which has the bravado of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies.

Stott also overtly emphasises Smetana's debt to Chopin in her playing, which is wonderfully reflective and subtle, above all in Dreams, and in the exquisite On the Sea Shore, written in 1861, shortly after Smetana's return to Prague from Sweden. Cechova, meanwhile, steers him closer to Liszt with extrovert performances of great weight and percussive panache. None of this music could be described as uninspired, but Smetana, whose work in other forms makes him one of the most startlingly original 19th-century composers, was never quite able to throw off his influences when writing piano music - which also, perhaps, explains its neglect.

Review by Tim Ashley, The Guardian

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Kathryn Stott - Dreams: Kathryn Stott plays Bedrich Smetana (2007)

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Kathryn Stott - Dreams: Kathryn Stott plays Bedrich Smetana (2007)

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Kathryn Stott - Dreams: Kathryn Stott plays Bedrich Smetana (2007)

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