Beam 5'51'' into ''From Bohemia's Woods and Fields'' and you reach the very heart of this great performance. The CPO brass lunge towards the main melody with unconstrained eagerness, their impact much aided by smiling glissandos. And as Talich and his players climb aboard Smetana's home-spun melody, everything assumes a sunny glow: it's almost as if the entire work thus far had prepared for that one magical moment. But there are of course countless additional splendours: the breadth and flexibility of Vysehrad, Vltava's luminous mobility, Sarka's grimness (so different here to the excitable Kubelik), Tabor's sense of foreboding and the chest-swelling patriotism of Blanik. The strings retain more than a hint of the portamentos that were such a distinctive feature of Talich's 1929 recording listed above, but the woodwinds are notably superior and the basically excellent sound releases more of the music's dynamism than was easily audible on 78s. The transfer makes a warmer case for the original tapes than my old LPs did, and generally serves Talich well—except in one maddening respect. A couple of bars have dropped from 5'26'' into ''Tabor'', thus utterly ruining the contour of a major climax. I checked the CD against my ancient Supraphon LPs (9/57), and can confirm that the offending cut was not present on the original. So I for one will not be parting with my LPs. But if you can write off the missing bars as 'historical wear and tear'—and I can appreciate that it goes against the grain to do so—then expect a Ma vlast that's way above average, an inspired affirmation of national pride by a wonderful people who had only recently escaped one form of tyranny, and would subsequently fall prey to another.'