Rafael Kubelik’s DG recording of Dvorák’s Slavonic Dances remains one of the reference editions, and it’s available on “Originals” at exactly the same price as this Decca Legends reissue. Interpretively, this oldcomer offers nothing better, and technically the Vienna Philharmonic of 1955 wasn’t a great orchestra by any standard. Listen to the squawking oboes in Op. 46 No. 7, the scruffy strings just about anywhere (take the beginning of Op. 72 No. 5 as a good example), and a percussion section whose contribution would make a high school bandmaster blush. Kubelik drives the music hard, as he also would do later, but his energetic high spirits don’t always communicate to the players. In Op. 46 No. 2, for instance, the fractionally late cymbals bog down the rhythm: the faster Kublik goes, the heavier he sounds. The harsh, two-dimensional sonics exaggerate the wiry string tone and largely fail to capture bass drum, lower strings, or timpani with noticeable impact. If you’re going to reissue a disc of music recorded very successfully by the same artist at a later date, the only criterion ought to be: Is this older version better? No one with a scintilla of musicality would argue that this Decca recording beats DG’s, so why try to deceive the public by calling this a “Legend”, unless of course you use the term to mean a “myth” or “heroic deed that never really happened”?
