Josef Suk’s dramatic, 23‑minute Fantasy in G minor opens like Zampa in a bad mood (remember Hérold’s popular overture?), but the “storm and stress” element soon gives way to a wealth of lyricism and writing that combines memorable themes with imaginative orchestration, nicely focused here by JoAnn Falletta and her players (note the prominent Buffalo horns at 1'23"). It’s a cracker of a piece, with a particularly lovely theme at around 5'44" that cues a skipping, lightly syncopated variation, and a mass of attractive incident around and beyond.

Recordings of the Fantasy aren’t exactly thick on the ground. A thrilling historical live version with Carl Flesch was released some years ago by Symposium; more recently, the alert and intelligent Pamela Frank with the Czech Philharmonic under Sir Charles Mackerras prepared a fine version (Decca, 12/05); while a few years earlier, Josef Suk (the composer’s grandson) set down his compelling and memorably idiomatic interpretation with the Czech Philharmonic under Václav Neumann (Supraphon), crisper in outline and more voluptuous than this warm-blooded new version by Michael Ludwig and the Buffalo Philharmonic which delivers everything needed excepting, perhaps, a clinching degree of spontaneity. The music that eventually emerged as Fairy Tale was composed some five years before the Fantasy, when Suk was still in his mid-twenties, and has in recent years established itself as one of the composer’s most popular works. The first two movements are especially attractive and again JoAnn Falletta’s full-textured, warm-hearted approach is a fair swap for the characteristic bite that Libor Pesek (Supraphon) and Jirí Belohlávek (Chandos) achieve with the Czech Philharmonic. Likewise, Sir Charles Mackerras and the Czech Phil (Decca, 12/05) with the Fantastic Scherzo, a sort of “update” on Dvorák’s Scherzo capriccioso and musically just as attractive. Naxos’s recordings achieve a warmth and amplitude that suit the performances.