'The discography of total recordings is continually increasing and the wider the choice the greater the trouble to pick out the real golden coins from the output, which is gradually becoming rather complex. One of these golden coins is certainly the total recording of Ivan Anguélov with the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra Bratislava. Although Anguélov doesn’t offer a revolutionary, newly thought out version, he develops a perfectly interesting and conclusive study of Dvořák’s symphonies.'

Old-fashioned is history

The native Bulgarian Ivan Anguélov studied in Sofia, Moscow, France and Germany, worked at the Opera of Lausanne, the Opera House Bonn, he conducted also the Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra and was the chief conductor of the National Opera Bratislava. Since 1999 he is a regular guest of the Slovak Radio Orchestra, with whom he went in search for an up-to-date Dvořák-sound.
These recordings prove that their search wasn’t fruitless. Anguélov is a conductor with editorial ambitions. Where Dvořák’s score shows some so-called long drawn-out passages and formal weakness, Anguélov editing begins. In the interview and the booklet he constantly reinsures the benevolent authority of the great Dvořák interpreter, Vaclav Neumann, who would have done it the same way, and he entitles his editing of the material. Be that he made some abridgements and minimal retouch here and there. For the well-disposed listener , who doesn’t really has the opportunity to do some editorial researches and to study the autograph, it would have been useful to learn where Anguélov’s editorial work is effective.

However, on the other side of any musical discussion, Anguélov’s interpretation of Dvořák’s symphonies is a musical experience. The conductor wants to avoid an old-fashioned Dvořák-sound and exempts the symphonies from the waste products of viscous Bohemian dumpling-bliss. Until now the expectations were pretty often characterized by a standardized Dvořák-sound: light and sweet, indulging in traditional idiomatic cantilenas, dense orchestra sound – the synonym for romance. Of course there were already some initial stages to indulge Dvořák’s symphonies from this romantic superstructure. It was wrong to dissect the musical material in individual episodes and to leave the romantic element out of consideration by a sharp phrasing. Anguélov chooses an other approach. He doesn’t leave the romantic out of consideration, on the contrary! He exactly accentuates this element, by simply transposing the note text into music. Accents create rhythmic – dynamic pulsing and automatically challenge a great phrasing curve. Dvořák’s orchestral facture basically avoids a too big density and is mostly transparently textured. With Anguélov, the slender sound, which structures the separate orchestra groups, gets the better and I don not exaggerate when I say that in that way, the symphonies receive a nearly classical striking profile.

Anguélov’s direction mostly demands stringent tempi. He makes the strings play with very little vibrato and in this way, he achieves a wonderful balanced transparency. In these recordings it are indeed the strings that score with precise rhythm and accurate intonation…informative texts on the genesis of the opera complete these excellent recordings. Dvořák’s symphonies – listened to with a modern ear.