''The overall shape of Pan is difficult to describe'', as Vladimir Lebl put it in his short biography of Novak (Prague: 1968). Superficially it is a piano tone poem (which the composer later orchestrated), divided up into five movements—a prologue in which the work's basic theme is outlined, ''The Mountains'', ''The Sea'', ''The Forest'' and ''The Woman''. But behind these descriptive titles lies a work in which many of Novak's preoccupations come together: they include an abiding interest in monothematicism, a love of folk-inflected melody, rhapsodic piano writing that owes much to the general (if not specific) example of Liszt, and not least a strong pantheism.
This love of nature has already been manifest in his best known orchestral work, In the Tatras, and the ''Mountains'' movement here continues the mood. ''The Sea'', perhaps a surprising piece for a citizen of a land-locked nation, is an impression of a wild Atlantic voyage. ''The Forest'' again derives from an earlier preoccupation with the deep woods of Novak's native Bohemia; while ''The Woman'' reflects not only Novak's love for the singer Marie Musilova but seems to associate her with a personification of the preceding natural impressions. She is wood nymph as well as a real woman. The undoubted imaginative sweep of this ambitious work made Novak famous, and it is still much respected in Czechoslovakia; performances in this country are much harder to find, so Frantisek Rauch's commanding account of it on this record is the more interesting to lovers of Czech music. Lacking either score or previous experience of the work, I can only report that his performance seems splendidly in control of the music's wide-ranging technical demands and hardly less wide-ranging moods, which slip from the literally descriptive (the storm at sea is violent, the woods sunny as well as somewhat eerie) to the reflective and even ecstatic. The recording is clear and responsive.'