http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/arts/music/czech-philharmonic-plays-carnegie-hall.html 2014-11-18 01:35:40 Czech Philharmonic Plays Carnegie Hall The Czech Philharmonic, under the leadership of Jiri Belohlavek, returned to Carnegie Hall with works by Dvorak and Janacek. === The It provided a tentative answer in the affirmative with its recently released recordings of Dvorak’s nine symphonies and three concertos in a fine This is actually Mr. Belohlavek’s second term with the orchestra, the first having ended abruptly in its second year, 1991, when the players, newly empowered to elect their leaders, spurned him in favor of a German, Gerd Albrecht. The wounds have evidently healed. And the year and a half spent recording Dvorak recently must have amounted to a crash course in the style, if such were needed by an orchestra still overwhelmingly made up of Czechs. (Again, this is partly a function of finances, since the players’ salaries, paltry by Western and especially American standards, do not attract many outsiders.) In any case, the performance of Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony that concluded the program was lovely, flexible in its tempos and phrasing. The strings were warm and caressing, the brasses brash and incisive; the woodwinds sang with a slightly nasal, Slavic character and danced with a playful show of elbows and knees. Janacek’s brazenly colorful “Taras Bulba” proved similarly congenial to these performers. A symphonic rhapsody in three movements, it memorializes the deaths of Taras Bulba — Gogol’s fictional hero, a fighter for the liberation of a Ukraine then under the thumb of Poland — and his sons, Andrei and Ostap. The tender moments were hardly less impressive than the blustery ones. And more bluster: The program ventured from the Czech homeland only as far as Hungary, with Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Here and elsewhere, there were several excellent solo stints from orchestral musicians, especially those by Josef Spacek Jr., a concertmaster, in the Janacek; Vaclav Petr, the principal cellist, in the Liszt; and, on the English horn, Vojtech Jouza in the Dvorak. The concert was rich with encores. Before intermission, Mr. Thibaudet offered an unpublished Schubert waltz in G flat, said to have been jotted on a tablecloth as a wedding gift, arranged by Richard Strauss. In its utter simplicity and gentle lyricism, it proved an ideal foil to Liszt’s bombast. Mr. Belohlavek and the orchestra closed the afternoon with Smetana’s rousing Overture to “The Bartered Bride” and Oskar Nedbal’s swooning “Valse Triste.” Before the concert, Mr. Belohlavek was awarded the 2014 Antonin Dvorak Prize by the Czech Academy of Classical Music for his life’s achievement and particularly his service to Czech music. The ceremony and concert were attended by Antonin Dvorak III, Dvorak’s grandson.