This is the Year of Czech Music, with major anniversaries for Smetana and Suk and round numbers for many other Czech composers falling in 2024. Not that the Czech Philharmonic should ever need an excuse for bringing its heritage on tour. The first of the orchestra’s pair of Proms – conducted by Jakub Hrůša, who takes over next year at the Royal Opera – balanced Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with something far less familiar: Suk’s Symphony No 2, named for Asrael, the angel of death. Suk began the work in mourning for Dvořák, his father-in-law and mentor; only months later his wife, Otilie, also died, and the devastated Suk completed the symphony as a double memorial.
It is an uncompromising work, shot through with grief in all its guises, yet Hrůša and his orchestra made it seem life-affirming. Suk’s music, richly textured, is almost cinematic in its evocative scope and in the way it creates a feeling of motion – or the opposite: in the second movement, it was the sense of constraint that was striking, the melodic line fidgety yet tethered above a relentless tick-tock on plucked strings. The second part of the symphony – the part written after Otilie’s death – brought passages that were wistful and heady with nostalgia, then a blistering dance topped by nightmarish E-flat clarinet. It was all movingly, powerfully played, and the hour-long work flew by.
Asrael was a better showcase for the orchestra than their slightly reticent performance of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto, in which even the wind soloists seemed happy to take a back seat rather than try to compete or duet with Anastasia Kobekina’s solo cello. Kobekina took to the spotlight with open, impassioned playing, her broad full sound complemented by an interior-sounding tone that projected equally well, yet the performance as a whole was rather episodic, and while the moment of hush before the final huge crescendo was magical, it didn’t seem to join up with the rest. Her encore was fun: a gallardo by her father, Vladimir Kobekin, based on a Renaissance tune – a whirling, foot-stomping dance for cello and tambourine.
• The BBC Proms continue until 14 September
