Smetana: Orchestral Works / String Quartet No. 1 (arranged for orchestra)

This album celebrates the bicentennial of Czech composer Bedřich Smetana with world premieres and previously unreleased recordings by George Szell conducting the NBC Symphony and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. These live performances from the 1940s have been masterfully restored by the critically acclaimed audio engineer and producer Lani Spahr. Featured are the overture to his opera "The Bartered Bride", "Wallenstein's Camp", a symphonic poem he composed during his time in Sweden, and "The Moldau", another symphonic poem from the collection "Má vlast" (My Homeland). Also from "Má vlast" is "From Bohemia's Woods and Fields", and the album concludes with the String Quartet No. 1 "From My Life" from 1876, in which Smetana recalls his youth as an artist, his love of dance in the form of a polka, and his beloved first wife. The quartet is included on this album in an orchestration created in 1939 by the Hungarian-born conductor George Szell, who was known as the music director of the Cleveland Orchestra from 1946 until his death in 1970. On March 8, 1941, Szell conducted the NBC Symphony Orchestra in the world premiere of his arrangement, together with the overture to "The Bartered Bride" and "The Moldau". After his debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1943, Szell recorded "From Bohemia's Woods and Fields" and "Forests" from "My Homeland" with them in 1945, and this performance is also featured on this new release.