Smetana B. My Country - for piano for four hands / P.Jiříkovský, D.Wiesner piano

Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884) - Má vlast / My Country

Cyklus symfonických básní / A Cycle of Symphonic Poems

1. Vyšehrad 13:44

2. Vltava 12:25

3. Šárka 9:44

4. Z českých luhů a hájů / From Bohemian Fields and Groves 12:22

5. Tábor 12:28

6. Blaník 13:29

Total time 74:38

Petr Jiříkovský, Daniel Wiesner - piano

...Presumably, the first performance of My Country did not produce such a monumental impression as is linked with the cycle today when we hear the instrumental adaptations by Karel Kovařovic, Václav Talich and other Czech conductors. Unlike the modern version, the orginal one may have given more space to the instrumental and structural details which are sometimes muffled by the full orchestra sound. An evidence of Smetana's own idea of what was important in the orchestral score coud be presented in the composer's four-hand arangement of all six symphonic poems of the cycle, which began to be published in the late 1879 in Urbánek's publishing house. My Country is a work of a composer who had no auditory control. As an active pianist, Smetana knew intimately well the means and possibilities of a piano stylization, and the result as presented in his transcription of the orchestral form into the piano factureis a remarkable example of musical imagination. In his piano reductions, he was able to popularize the compositions, and at the same time to create virtuoso works which deserve independent production...

(Studio Matouš 1995)