Decca: Janáček — From the House of the Dead, Mackerras / Wiener Philharmoniker 2CD

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Product Details:

• Product Type: Audio CD (2-disc set)
• Brand / Label: Decca (The Opera Company / A Universal Music Company)
• Composer: Leoš Janáček (1854–1928)
• Conductor: Sir Charles Mackerras
• Orchestra: Wiener Philharmoniker
• Chorus: Wiener Staatsopernchor
• Language: Czech (Z Mrtvého Domu)
• Original Recording: 1980 (Decca Music Group Limited)
• This Edition: 2013 (Decca Music Group Limited)
• Genre: Classical, Opera
• Style: Czech Opera, 20th Century
• Catalog Number: 478 5790
• UPC: 028947857907
• Condition: Factory Sealed

Product Features

• Format: 2 × CD
• Discs: 2
• Total Runtime: 123:19
• Audio: ADD (Analogue to Digital Remaster)
• Booklet: Enclosed; libretto available online with this CD
• Made in the EU
• Packaging: Standard double jewel case, factory shrink-wrapped

Overview

Sir Charles Mackerras's 1980 Decca recording of Janáček's From the House of the Dead with the Wiener Philharmoniker remains the benchmark account of this uncompromising opera — the one most conductors and critics return to when assessing any new production. The opera, Janáček's last, is based on Dostoevsky's prison memoir and has no conventional protagonist, no romantic plot, and no resolution: just a series of prisoner narratives, each one brutal or tender or both at once.

Mackerras understood this music from the inside out. His collaboration with the Wiener Philharmoniker on the complete Janáček cycle for Decca is one of the most sustained achievements in opera recording history, and this is arguably its most powerful single disc. The cast is almost entirely Czech — Jiří Zahradníček, Ivo Žídek, Václav Zítek, Dalibor Jedlička, and Beno Blachut (veteran of Czech opera, here in the role of the Old Prisoner) — which brings an authenticity of language and idiom that no international cast could replicate.

The 2013 reissue adds two Janáček chamber works as bonuses on disc 2: Mládí and Říkadla, performed by the London Sinfonietta under David Atherton. At over two hours across the complete opera plus the chamber bonuses, this is a comprehensive and important release. The ADD remaster is clean, and the Decca production values of the original 1980 sessions hold up without qualification.

Interesting Facts

• Janáček began composing From the House of the Dead in 1927 at the age of 73 and completed it the year before his death in 1928; it was premiered posthumously in Brno in 1930.
• The opera is based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's The House of the Dead (1862), a fictional memoir drawn from the author's four years of imprisonment in a Siberian penal colony.
• Beno Blachut (1913–1985), who sings the Old Prisoner here, was one of the greatest Czech tenors of the 20th century and a central figure in the postwar Czech opera tradition; his participation in this recording gives it particular historical weight.
• Sir Charles Mackerras (1925–2010) was an Australian conductor who became the foremost non-Czech interpreter of Janáček's operas; his Decca cycle with the Wiener Philharmoniker, recorded between 1976 and 1982, is still considered definitive.
• The Wiener Philharmoniker rarely recorded Czech opera in this period; Mackerras's persuasion of the orchestra to commit to the full Janáček cycle was considered a significant achievement in opera recording history.
• Mládí (Youth), composed in 1924, is one of Janáček's most appealing chamber works — a wind sextet that looks back on his own youth with both nostalgia and sharpness; it is included here as a valuable bonus alongside Říkadla (Nursery Rhymes).

Cast

• Filka Morozov (Luka Kuzmich) — Jiří Zahradníček
• Skuratov — Ivo Žídek
• Shishkov — Václav Zítek
• Goryanchikov — Dalibor Jedlička
• Commandant — Antonín Švorc
• Alyeya — Jaroslava Janská
• Tall Prisoner — Vladimír Krejčík
• Short Prisoner — Richard Novák
• Old Prisoner — Beno Blachut
• Voice from the Steppe / Cherevin — Zdeněk Švehla
• Wench — Eva Zigmundová
• Shapkin / Kedril — Zdeněk Soušek
• Chekunov / Don Juan — Jaroslav Soušek

Bonus works (disc 2): Mládí and Říkadla — London Sinfonietta and Chorus, cond. David Atherton

Publishers

℗ 1980 Decca Music Group Limited. © 2013 Decca Music Group Limited. Made in the EU. A Universal Music Company.

Heard Mackerras's Janáček before? A brief note helps other opera collectors find this one.