“Of all Czech composers Josef Suk left the finest and most consistent corpus of piano music”, writes John Tyrrell in the insert-note to this second volume (the first was reviewed in 1/95), and Niel Immelman’s survey continues to support this contention. At the centre of the recital is the beautiful suite (Op. 28) of pieces occasioned by the death of Suk’s young wife, Dvorak’s daughter Otylka, and this is affectingly played, as the limping rhythm of her failing heartbeat turns at the end into the moving elegiac “Souvenirs”. He wrote it for their young son to remember her by; despite these circumstances, and the title About Mother, it is not a sentimental work but one in which grief is expressed in true and well-proportioned music.
Summer moods is a warm, more rhapsodic piece, gently handled here. The Op. 21 Suite is less considerable, though it includes some highly agreeable music, as does the set of Episodes collected together posthumously. The whole makes a good recital. Collectors who persist with the series are likely to end up agreeing with Dr Tyrrell’s contention; those who are content with a single record should enjoy this volume, though I would not set it ahead of Radoslav Kvapil’s recent Unicorn-Kanchana record, which includes About Mother, the Six Pieces, Op. 7, and both Spring and Summer moods.R1 '9701065'