‘I love this music and no-one seems to play it.” It’s only a slight exaggeration on Leif Ove Andsnes’s part to say that about Dvořák’s Poetic Tone Pictures; this beautifully recorded release is one of only a handful available, and he is the highest profile of today’s pianists to have recorded this baker’s dozen of miniatures.
You’ll wonder why on earth they have flown under the radar for so long. Evocatively titled individually and often sounding deceptively simple, they come from a similar impulse to that of Schumann’s Kinderszenen, Grieg’s Lyric Pieces or even Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. It’s not certain whether Dvořák wrote them to be performed together as a collection or not, but they work well this way, not because they tell an extended story but because each fits into the sonic context of what comes before.
