This release and 9137 are the initial releases in a series of CD’s containing piano works by Czech composers, including Fibich, Janacek, Martinu, Suk and Vorisek played by Radoslav Kvapil, one of to-day’s leading exponents of Czech piano music. The larger scale compositions of these composers are of course well known but the piano works have been neglected, unjustly so, as they contain a wealth of attractive music.
Smetana’s Bagatelles and Impromptus were written at the beginning of his career in  1844 whilst the two sets of Czech Dances come from his maturity in the 1870s. The two sets of dances make up an anthology of national dance rhythms, but concentrated on Czech rather than Dvorak’s pan-Slavic Slavonic Dances.