MARBECKS COLLECTABLE: Dvorak - Tone Poems (Incls Golden Spinning Wheel & Noon Witch)

"Recorded with vibrancy and a wide dynamic range, these performances unquestionably lead the field….(Rattle) turns (these poems) into miniature orchestral opera with unfailing attention to dynamic detail."
(Orchestral album of the Month BBC Music Sept 2005)

"Rattle has a large conception of these imaginative works, which are delivered with sonic splendor"
(AudAud.com Aug 2005)

During his time as director of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle has made several recordings on EMI Classics of repertoire new to both him and the orchestra. Last summer saw them taking on Messiaen's Éclairs sur l'au delà… and they brought in the New Year with a live recording of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana at the Berlin Silvester concert. Both recordings received worldwide acclaim in the press: "A definitive recording of an epic masterpiece." (Messiaen - The Observer); "…the orchestra here plays it as if it were its meat and drink… Stunning." (Orff - Classic FM magazine). Simon Rattle has now turned his attention to Antonín Dvo?ák, with this, his first recording of the Tone Poems, captured in live performances at Berlin's Philharmonie in March and June last year.

Dvorák is best known and loved for his 'New World' Symphony and Slavonic Dances and became the most well-known composer in his native Bohemia, the northern part of the Czech Republic. He is less well known for his collection of four Tone Poems, which were all written in 1896, towards the end of his life. The four Tone Poems are Holoubek (The Wild Dove), Polednice (The Noon Witch), Zlat˛ Kolovrat (The Golden Spinning Wheel) and Vodník (The Water Goblin). In spite of their innocent-sounding names, the Tone Poems are based on the gruesome poems of 19th-century Czech poet, Karel Jaromír Erben, who himself became an icon of Czech literature. The Wild Dove opens with a funeral procession and a widow following the coffin. We learn that she has poisoned her husband and she soon marries again. On her husband's grave, a tree grows and a wild dove appears in its branches. It seeks out the wife and its persistent cooing eventually drives her to madness and to suicide. Polednice tells of a mother who issues a typical parental warning to her only child, that if he does not stop crying the 'Noon Witch' will come to get him. No sooner has she made the threat, to her horror, the witch does arrive and in the mother's efforts to protect her son, she smothers him to death. Her husband returns home to find her cradling the dead child in her arms. The Golden Spinning Wheel sees a mother punished after she kills her stepdaughter to secure her own daughter's happiness in marriage. As she spins the wheel, her stepdaughter comes back to life piece by piece in golden thread, and takes her revenge by brutally killing the mother once she is whole. Perhaps the most shocking of all is the tale of the Water Goblin, who falls for a girl living with her mother by the lake he inhabits. He kidnaps her and against her will, they have a baby together. The girl's unhappiness leads the Water Goblin to allow her one last visit to her mother on the condition that she show no affection for her and that she leave the baby behind as hostage. But the mother won't let the girl return to the lake. After shutting the goblin out, the mother and daughter hear a thud on the door and open it to find the baby dead, and headless, on the doorstep.

The Tone Poems are rarely-performed works and this recording by Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic is a very special addition to their discography on EMI Classics.