Smetana (The) Bartered Bride

The playing gets top marks but this is ‘travel channel’ telly

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Edvard Grieg, Bedřich Smetana

Genre:

DVD

Label: Cascade

Media Format: Digital Versatile Disc

Media Runtime: 75

Mastering:

Stereo

Catalogue Number: 60014

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
Má vlast Bedřich Smetana, Composer
Bedřich Smetana, Composer
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
Libor Pesek, Conductor
Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra
Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra
Peer Gynt Edvard Grieg, Composer
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
Edvard Grieg, Composer
Libor Pesek, Conductor
Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra
Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra
(The) Bartered Bride Bedřich Smetana, Composer
Bedřich Smetana, Composer
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra
This cheap label round-up of poor quality Czech TV broadcasts from the 1980s features those alternately cute and annoying travelogues with ballet of the kind that interrupt the New Year’s Day concert from Vienna. However, the companies involved (the Prague Chamber Ballet and the Ballet of the Slovakian National Theatre) are not considered important enough to be credited on DVD box or booklet-notes, let alone the names of choreographer and director (Václav Kaslík) of the Peer Gynt sequence. The picture quality is primitive and grainy, the sound and transfers likewise. Pesek and his orchestras play well: the Overture and three dances from the Bride have a tangy, forward wind balance which is most appropriate, making it more of a pity that picture and sound synchronisation seems so approximate.

The Vltava film features all the expected illustrations of the tone-poem’s scenario (the river from babbling brook to mighty torrent, merrymaking peasants, etc). The Bride, introduced by a crude summary in American (despite what the language menu promises, that’s all I could get), manages to place all the action in mime and dance within the four orchestral pieces. (The Polka is named on the box as the number ‘Why shouldn’t we be happy?’ but no chorus takes part.)

The Grieg reorders the Suites in more or less the order they come in the play – although ‘Morning’ is removed from Arabia to Norway and ‘Solveig’s Song’ comes twice – to match a series of pas de deux for Peer and his women, shot mostly in studio in front of picture screens. The results would while away a pleasant hour on a plane journey (‘Anitra’s Dance’ looks like an out-take from Carry On Follow That Camel) but are hardly compulsive.

Discover the world's largest classical music catalogue with Presto Music. 

Stream on Presto Music | Buy from Presto Music

Gramophone Print

  • Print Edition

From £6.67 / month

Subscribe

Gramophone Digital Club

  • Digital Edition
  • Digital Archive
  • Reviews Database
  • Full website access

From £8.75 / month

Subscribe

                              

If you are a library, university or other organisation that would be interested in an institutional subscription to Gramophone please click here for further information.