This is one smoking hot performance of Suk’s masterpiece, and I wouldn’t have expected it coming from Claus Peter Flor, a fine musician but one who’s seldom associated with this sort of volatility. Then again, when you’ve made a recording career primarily devoted to Mendelssohn, a composer whose qualities never would be summed up by the words “smoking hot”, perhaps it’s not too surprising that some of your interpretive strengths have yet to be exposed. I’m thinking in particular of the climax at the end of the Asrael Symphony’s first movement, with thudding bass drum and screaming violins, all capped by a massive accelerando into the final catastrophe. Fabulous!
Then there’s the dazed stillness of the second movement, with its constant refrain of the “death” motive from Dvorák’s Requiem, or the ghostly danse macabre that is the central scherzo. Flor handles all of this magnificently, with perfectly judged tempos and incisive accents. Suk said of the finale, “You have no idea what that final C major chord cost me”–and hearing the intensity that Flor brings to the unfolding struggle, you can believe him. The Malaysian Philharmonic plays like a pack of demons, and the sonics, as usual from this source, are world-class. What a great piece, and what a great performance!
