Dvorák - Overtures: a highly engaging collection

Antonín Dvorák wrote two of the five overtures here (My Home and Hussite) for now-forgotten plays whose subject matter encouraged him to use traditional songs.

The other three (In Nature's Realm, Carnival, Othello) are self-standing concert pieces that can be performed individually or as a set, in which guise the composer presented them as Nature, Life and Love.

Jakub Hruša’s approach is finely detailed and at times more spacious than you might expect.

An easy-going Carnival Overture suggests that the energy in having a good time need not be as driven or forced as conductors like it to be.

Yet Hruša can still wind up the dramatic tension in Othello. A highly engaging collection.

[ pentatonemusic.com ]