By Jonathan Blumhofer

Wow. Stewart Goodyear can play Prokofiev. The Czech Philharmonic and Tomás Netopil are compelling advocates, playing Dvořák with plenty of rhythmic zest and tonal warmth.

Antonin Dvořák  wrote a lot of music, most of it good, some of it great. The ten Legends and three Slavonic Rhapsodies straddle both of those worlds but, in the hands of the Czech Philharmonic and Tomás Netopil, mostly lean towards the latter.

Written between his two sets of Slavonic Dances, the Legends are similarly concise – the shortest here clocks in at just under three minutes, the longest at just under six – but their materials are a bit more substantial and more thoroughly developed. Nevertheless, there’s an easy familiarity to the music which, despite its title, is not programmatic.

Netopil and his forces are compelling advocates, playing with plenty of rhythmic zest and tonal warmth. They vigorously emphasize each movement’s play of contrasts: the crisp attacks of No. 3’s fast parts and its relaxed, almost luxurious middle section are beautifully set off. Likewise impressive are No. 6’s stratified dynamics, the tempo shifts in No. 8, and the horn solos in No. 10.

The Rhapsodies date from 1878, the same year as the first set of Dances, and are altogether more sophisticated scores, anticipating Dvořák’s masterful set of late tone poems of the 1890s.

Again, Netopil and his forces have the music’s style well in hand. This pays dividends in Nos. 1 and 3, which can meander (for all his strengths, Dvořák was occasionally verbose). The latter’s big moments, in particular, boast lots of weight and presence. Best is the G-minor second Rhapsody, which delivers excellent textural clarity as well as spades of color in the marching section and a lilting sense of the dance throughout.

Wow. Stewart Goodyear can play Prokofiev.

That could be the review. But it won’t be. His recording of that composer’s Piano Concertos Nos. 2 and 3, plus the Piano Sonata No. 7 deserves more.

Even so, it’s hard to get past the pianist’s astounding technique. This is astonishingly difficult music: each movement of the Second Concerto seems to be trying to outdo, in its demands, the last – and the first is at least K2-level, if not an Everest. Yet Goodyear’s got all the notes in hand. In Orchid’s impressively clean engineering, you hear most of them too.

If there’s a downside to the pianist’s thrillingly intense approach, it’s that moments in both concerti can feel a touch literal. For all its spikiness, the Second’s Scherzo is a bit breathless. And the finale of the Third lacks a degree of color and expressivity that you get from, say, Argerich or Kissin.

That said, there’s an abundance of character on display in these performances. The Second is tempestuous and well-directed, quite cheeky at times, and never sounding as forbidding as its technical demands sometimes make it.

Textural clarity and rhythmic exactitude are the names of the game in the Third. The outer movements are both beautifully played and full of the wonder of discovery. In the central variations, Goodyear and the BBC Symphony Orchestra deliver moments of enchanting lightness and space.

Throughout, the orchestra, which is led by Andrew Litton, brings a mix of discretion and insouciant panache to their parts. Their lyrical moment in the middle of the Second’s Intermezzo, for one, is charming.

Rounding out the disc is the Sonata No. 7. No matter how dizzying or ferocious this music gets – and the insistent 7/8 patterns in the finale are ever unsettled – Goodyear has it all, somehow, in his fingers.

He gets the first movement’s pensive Andantinos to sing, in part because of how distinctly the pianist sets them up alongside the section’s taut, savage Allegro episodes. So, too, the central Andante, whose rich-toned textural thickets here both make cogent sense and, for one of the only times on the album, provide, for six minutes, an oasis of true repose.

Jonathan Blumhofer is a composer and violist who has been active in the greater Boston area since 2004. His music has received numerous awards and been performed by various ensembles, including the American Composers Orchestra, Kiev Philharmonic, Camerata Chicago, Xanthos Ensemble, and Juventas New Music Group. Since receiving his doctorate from Boston University in 2010, Jon has taught at Clark University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and online for the University of Phoenix, in addition to writing music criticism for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.