CCMusic.com

To mark Libor Pešek's eightieth birthday, Supraphon presents a representative selection of large orchestral recordings he made from 1981 to 1989. Compositions by Josef Suk, who has occupied a privileged position in Pešek's career, are featured alongside paramount Impressionist pieces La mer and Ravel's Suites from the ballet Daphnis et Chloe. Pešek's recording of Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 and Suk's lesser-known suite Under the Apple Tree are album also includes recordings of two concertos Scriabin's Piano Concerto, with Garrick Ohlsson. Within the illustrious career of Libor Pešek, a great groundbreaking figure among Czech conductors, the period documented on this CD represents one of his peaks, the time of his most intensive collaboration with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, preceding his assuming the post of music director of the Roy recordings bear witness to Pešek's remarkably nuanced work with the orchestral sound and sense for the great lines of Romantic orchestral scores.