If you already own Dvorák’s tone poems performed by Kubelik (DG), Neumann (Supraphon), or Harnoncourt (Warner), and you’re perfectly happy with them, you probably don’t need this compilation featuring three different conductors and the SWR orchestra. However, if you collect these pieces, you might find the interpretations worth your time. Neumann leads with his customary skill in The Water Goblin and The Wood Dove, and the timbre of the orchestra is recognizably German. Strings and brass tend to dominate, the woodwinds take a back seat, and the percussion tends to come and go a bit, though when it’s there (as in the big, dark tambourine in The Wood Dove), it’s very present indeed. The result has the music sounding more forceful and darker than it usually does, and this shows these works in a different, and to my ears, interesting light. Certainly it gives extra force to the climaxes, where the trombones really cut loose.
The best performance of all is Walter Weller’s exciting assault on The Noonday Witch, a swiftly visceral, take-no-prisoners account of this masterful score that moves inexorably to its tragic conclusion. Most disappointing is Zinman’s rhythmically stiff, flat-footed In Nature’s Realm, a rendition in which both he and the orchestra sound distinctly out of their element. Still, for the three late tone poems, at budget price with decent German radio engineering (a bit shrill in the Neumann items), Dvorák connoisseurs might well want to consider this as a supplement to the reference recordings listed above.
