One of the points of a festival like the London Symphony Orchestra's Bohemian Spring is to combine music that is familiar with works that are much less well known. If Czech music generally means Smetana, Dvorak and Janacek, this series promises a wider perspective. Those three composers certainly bulk large in the concerts, but there is also space for Suk, Novak, and even Martinu. Josef Suk's brooding Asrael Symphony comes next month, but his early Scherzo Fantastique opened Thursday's concert, conducted by Jiri Belohlavek.
In all these composers there is something essentially and identifiably Czech, passed on from generation to generation, while imported elements were grafted on: for Dvorak it was the classicism of Brahms, for Martinu, 50 years later, it was the French tradition. At the very beginning of the 20th century Suk was naturally indebted to his teacher, Dvorak, but in the 1903 Scherzo - which is a much more expansive work than its title suggests - the bold, imaginative use of orchestral colour shows clearly that he knew Richard Strauss's symphonic poems, and even perhaps Debussy's early orchestral works too. Belohlavek was adept at bringing out those tints, but equally assured in his moulding of the long, sinuous melodies, and glittering woodwind evocations of nature in its central section.
The LSO clearly likes working with Belohlavek - they recognise his seriousness and unfussy musical insights, and respond accordingly. Together, they provided a highly energised platform for Dvorak's Violin Concerto by Sarah Chang that was never content just to sing out the work's reservoir of good tunes, but dug deep to find something much harder edged. Chang's very fast vibrato lent urgency to every phrase, even in the slow movement, while the cross-rhythms of the finale were musically and physically stamped out. She seemed in a hurry, almost impatient.
Anyone lucky enough to hear Belohlavek's impassioned conducting of Jenufa at Glyndebourne last summer will know the sureness of his grasp of Janacek's dramatic architecture. He applied it here to the orchestral ballad The Fiddler's Child, making sure each gesture painted this portrait of rural poverty in ever finer detail, and brought the Sinfonietta steadily and compellingly to its star-spangled conclusion. He always pointed up new things, showing that the inner movements are just as rewarding as the famous framing fanfares.
