Hardly had Philips’s record of Janacek’s Nursery Rhymes and some of his male voice choruses with the Netherlands Chamber Choir and the Schoenberg Ensemble under Reinbert de Leeuw appeared, last December, in reviewing which I referred wistfully to the Moravian Teachers’ Choir, than here the Teachers are in splendid fettle with a very similar repertory. The recording, perhaps not surprisingly, is less lucid than the Netherlanders received; and this is noticeable mostly in some of the complicated counterpoint which Janacek writes, not all of which is as clear as it should be. Nevertheless, the new record is much to be preferred. For one thing, it includes the five greatest of all Janacek’s male voice choruses, “The Czech Legion”, “The Wandering Madman”, “Cantor Halfar”, “Marycka Magdonova” and “The 70,000”; and for another, it does so in performances that are unlikely to be excelled. The choir’s range is extraordinary, in music written for a completely individual sound complex and for a style of declamatory and lyrical singing unique to this tradition. They plunge effortlessly to a low B flat (in “Our Birch Tree”), showing that Western Slavs can do just as well as Russians at these depths, and their tenors soar with a clean, resiny tang that cuts across the packed lower textures. Under Antonin Tucapsky’s expert direction the vocal declamation varies from a lyrical curve of operatic sensuousness to something close to Sprechstimme, and with beautifully judged echo effects. The rhythms are complex, and much more is implied than can actually be notated, so that, for instance, the alternating double and quintuple rhythms of “Marycka Magdonova” generate a free declamatory manner whose fluency exactly expresses the narration of this beautiful, tragic choral song.
The Nursery Rhymes are sharply and wittily characterized, with some graceful singing (a lovely phrase in the song about spring that might have come out of – or gone into – Jenufa) and also some very sharp, cut and thrust playing from a little band that includes the unusual and unmistakable sound of the ocarina. Delightful. Texts and translations are included of the Nursery Rhymes, but most regrettably no texts and translations of four of the choruses. This is no way to save money on a fine record.'