Is it because the British are wary of national sentiment from a genius that this performance of Má vlast (My Homeland) is the only major London offering in Smetana’s 200th anniversary year? Supple movement, emotional range and unerring climaxes from Kirill Petrenko and his Berlin Phllharmonic might encourage more interest in great operas Libuše and Dalibor (which Jakub Hrůša hopes for in his Royal Opera tenure).
Not, alas, in 2024. But let’s celebrate what we did have, a demonstration of why this might be thought of as the world’s greatest orchestra, and why comparisons between Petrenko K and Carlos Kleiber continue to seem apt. Their shared quality of febrile intensity isn’t always a virtue: this river Vltava seemed to flow too fast (its lovely main theme needs some space, surely)
Yet the operatic rapid changes of the compressed revenge drama Šárka, the cut and thrust in the battle of Tábor and the helter-skelter celebrations of Blaník, with Berlin Philharmonic strings digging deep and clear in a way that I’ve heard from no other orchestra in the Albert Hall – and that from some distance – were super-vivid.
There’s something special about Smetana’s most moving moments: how odd that the cheeky little march which emerges after all the strife in the final movement, promising a happy end, should bring tears to the eyes. Above all, Petrenko’s players reminded us that, for all his love of cymbal crashing and piccolo piping, this equal first among Czech composers with Dvořák, Janáček and, yes, Martinů, is a master orchestrator.
All the quiet moments were spellbinding, none more so than the weird, shadowy fugal transformation of the opening adrenalin rush in “From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields” which takes its time to resolve into national pride. The woodwind are a dream; frustrating that, since the programme lists all principals, and it was hard to see faces from towards the back of the hall, I couldn’t tell you who were the oboist of the night, superlative in every entry from the first movement of the Schumann Piano Concerto before the interval onwards (update: I can see from the photo above that it's the great Albrecht Mayer), and the clarinet in the crucial Smetana solos. 
Frankly, the hour plus of this multifaceted epic would have been enough. Memories of Maria João Pires with the same orchestra under Abbado in the Schumann at the 1998 Proms weren’t effaced by Vikingur Ólafsson (pictured above). Such is his colour-palette that I want to be more involved than I was; a touch of over-refinement always seems to get in the way. Another maybe unhelpful comparison is with Mao Fujita playing the Dvořák Piano Concerto with the Czech Philharmonic last week, since the Schumann is infinitely more familiar; but I know I’d rather hear Fujita’s profoundly musical and implicitly emotional way with the Schumann. Even the Bach Adagio from the Fourth Organ Sonata, charmingly introduced, seemed almost too preciously pianissimo at the start, too loud in imitation of the original instrument at the climax; all intellectually justified, but this heart remained untouched. A minority view, I know.
