Title: For once, Harnoncourt loses his Czech touch
Product review: Those who are familiar with Harnoncourt's stunningly simple yet powerful Dvorak recordings will be deeply disappointed here. In the Dvorak triptych, Harnoncourt masterfully outlines the big tunes with plain tone colour, adopting fairly conventional tempi and resulting in extremely coherent performances. Not so here. His languid tempi (you will not be able to find any other recording which needs to spill onto a second disc) so often make each tone poem lose its structural shape, and his harping on individual melodies make things sound rather fragmentary. It is worth hearing for its entertainment and intellectual value, and it challenges your perception and conception of the piece, but not very convincingly to my ears.
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