Program notes by Jo Marie T. Larkin
Vitava (The Moldau) from Ma Vlast
Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884)
Bedrich Smetana was a Czech composer and conductor, and
wrote the symphonic poem, “The Moldau” from Ma Vlast in
1874. Well-known for his nationalistic compositions, Smetana
was best known for two nationalistic pieces: The Bartered Bride,
an opera, and Ma Vlast, a cycle of six symphonic poems.
Smetana was born in a small town in Bohemia, known today as
the Czech Republic. He played violin and piano from an early
age, and began composing when he was 8 years old.
Smetana studied music composition in Prague and, in addition to
being composer and a strong supporter of nationalistic Czech
music, Smetana was a conductor, pianist, and teacher. Many of
his works were programmatic with a nationalistic theme; in
particular, his symphonic poems were influenced by Liszt. A
symphonic poem, also known as a tone poem, is a programmatic
orchestral work that expresses musical ideas such as emotions,
scenes, or events through the music. Ma Vlast is an example of
nationalistic music and program music, and represents
Smetana’s deep love and beauty of his country, legends of the
past, and great moments in Bohemian history.
The best known of the six symphonic poems in Ma Vlast is the
second, The Moldau (Vitava). Using programmatic
compositional techniques to depict the Moldau River, the
longest river in Czechoslovakia at nearly 300 miles, Smetana
included the following description in a program he wrote to
accompany The Moldau’s music score:
“Two springs pour forth in the shade of the Bohemian forest,
one warm and gushing, the other cold and peaceful. Their waves
joyously rush down over their rocky beds, then unite and glisten
in the rays of the morning sun. Coming through Bohemia’s
valleys, they grow into a mighty river. Through the thick wood
it flows as the joyous sounds of a hunt and the hunter’s horn are
heard ever closer. It flows through the grass-grown pastures and
lowlands where a wedding feast is being celebrated with song
and dance. At night, wood and water nymphs revel in its
sparkling waves. Reflected on its surface are fortresses and
castles; witnesses of past days of knightly splendor and the
vanished glory of bygone ages. The Moldau swirls through the
St. John Rapids, finally flowing on in majestic peace toward
Prague to be welcomed by historic Vysehard (a legendary royal
castle), before it vanishes far beyond the poet’s gaze.”
The opening flute ripple, like the sight of a river glimpsed in the
far distance, is joined by the second flute’s ripples and the pluck
of strings, drawing you into the swells of the landscape, growing
ampler, mightier, until the scene the bursts free in a flood of
strings and melancholy; it is the old land, the river that runs
through it, “all the way from Smetana’s heart 125 years ago.”
Concerto for Cello and Orchestra No. 1 in b minor
Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904)
Allegro
Allegro ma non troppo
Allegro moderato
Antonin Dvořák began his Cello Concerto in New York in
November of 1894, working simultaneously on sketches and the
full score, and completed it in 1895. In response to the death of
his sister-in-law, he composed a new coda for the finale at the
end of that same year. With Dvořák conducting, Leo Stern
gave the first performance in 1896, in London. The first North
American performance soon followed, when Alwin Schroeder
was the soloist and Emil Paur conducted the Boston Symphony
Orchestra.
“ I have written a cello-concerto, but am sorry to this day I
did so, and I never intend to write another,” said Antonin
Dvořák to one of his composition students. “The cello is a
beautiful instrument, but its place is in the orchestra and in
chamber music. As a solo instrument, it isn’t much good.”
These comments may surprise music lovers, who revere
Dvořák’s Cello Concerto as one of the finest works in the
orchestral repertoire and the standard by which all subsequent
cello concertos have been measured. However, it was operetta
composer and principal cellist with the Metropolitan Opera,
Victor Herbert (who wrote Babes in Toyland), that changed
Dvořák’s low opinion of the cello as a solo instrument. Inspired
by Herbert’s “brilliant playing” as he performed his own cello
concerto in 1894, Dvořák was inspired to finish the cello
concerto he had started but left alone, “out of fear that the cello
was too delicate and too low in pitch to compete successfully
with an orchestra.” Although the cello concerto, like Dvořák’s
New World Symphony, was written while he lived in America,
it has no obvious American flavor. Instead of the New World’s
extroverted and profoundly American energy, the cello concerto
is a deeply personal Slavic work, full of beautiful and wellcrafted melodies.
The first movement introduces two of Dvořák ’s most
memorable themes. Low clarinet, joined by bassoons, with a
somber accompaniment of violas, cells, and basses, lends itself
to a remarkable series of oblique, multi-faceted harmonizations.
The other, more lyrical, is one of the loveliest French horn solos
in the literature. The tranquil mood in the Adagio section is
quickly broken by an orchestral outburst that introduces a
quotation from one of Dvořák ’s own songs, now sung by the
cello in its high register with tearing intensity. The song, the first
of a set composed in 1887-88, is “Kez duch muj san,” (“Leave
me alone”), was a favorite of his earlier love, Josefina, now his
sister-in-law. It was in her memory, after she died, that Dvořák
added the elegiac coda. The song returns in the finale, and that
coda stops the dance-like momentum. Dvorak wrote,” The finale
closes gradually, with a diminuendo, like a sigh, with
reminiscences of the first and second movements. The solo dies
down, then swells again, and the last bars are taken up by the
orchestra and concludes in a stormy mood.”
Critics and audiences received the cello concerto with
enthusiasm. The London Times praised “The wealth and beauty
of thematic material, the development of the first movement,
and the rich melodies in all three movements.” Johannes
Brahms, in a letter to his publisher, wrote, “Cellists can be
grateful to Dvořák for bestowing on them such a great and
skillful work.”
Symphony No. 1. Op. 17, in F Major
Zdenĕk Fibich (1850-1900)
Allegro moderato
Scherzo—Allegro assai
Adagio non troppo (alla romanza)
Allegro com fuoco e vivace
Zdenĕk Fibich’s career overlapped those of his countrymen
Smetana and Dvořák, but his music remained poised between
the twin poles of Czech nationalism and the New German
School. His earliest surviving symphony is No. 1 in F Major,
Op. 17, completed in Prague in 1883. An extraordinarily prolific
and wide ranging composer, Fibich was one of the three
supreme creators of Czech national music. Growing up in a
highly cultivated bilingual household and dividing his school
years between Vienna and Prague, Fibich had already composed
fifty works by the age of fifteen when he left for Leipzig to
perfect his musical training.
The Symphony No. 1 is a relaxed, bucolic work that already
reveals the hallmarks of his approach to sonata form; he
cultivated a fine art of thematic transformation and applied it to
all four movements. This, combined with a strong melodic vein
and a penchant for unusual key schemes, gave his music a
modern Czech flavor. Fibich’s three symphonies, like his
principal operas, confirm him as a major world figure, merging
the grace of Smetana, the easy folk-naturalism of Dvořák, and
the refined charm of Tchaikovsky. He is considered one of the
most gifted composers of music drama; Fibich succeeded on the
opera stage with compositions acceptable to both the serious
critics and the broader public.
A very colorful description of how his First Symphony was
received came from Novotny, who wrote; “Fibich was in his
work exalted by many visions and phenomena of the romantic
spirit, shady groves and oak woods with will-o’-wisps and
wood-nymphs, ancient castles, hunting and feasting, the
splendor of knightly jousting, of games and diversions, and
other images of the romantic Middle Ages were all a spur to his
creativity…”
Right from the beginning of the symphony, the first bars radiate
an atmosphere of extraordinary calm, a feeling experienced by
an observer connecting with nature. The opening in the horns
and violas depicts a ray of light which is rousing nature from the
dark. Suddenly the flutter of a triplet figure, which will remain a
key building and impelling element of the entire first movement,
suggests nature’s whisper and rustle. Although Fibich begins his
symphony in a meditative frame of mind, he also introduces a
lyrical subsidiary theme before a part of the development section
breaks the surface. At the very end of the movement, however,
the opening returns, but in a totally different shape. The theme is
heard in the full orchestra, bringing the movement to an end.
In contrast to the dreaming, meditative, and triumphal first
movement, the second movement is light-hearted and playful,
cast in classic ABA form. The opening section (A), which is
repeated, holds our attention with its lightness and virtuosity,
representing Fibich’s childhood game-playing in the woods. The
middle (B) section is different in that it carries echoes of folk
music, of the Polka dance. The third movement is perhaps the
most characteristic one. After the playful and frolicsome second
movement, we enter a world of poetry, of ballad. The opening
theme in oboe and horn seems to be telling of knights, fallen
comrades, mysterious castles, and old ruins. The accompaniment
in the harp, supported by string pizzicatos, evokes the sound of
the lute, the very instrument linked with medieval and
renaissance imagery. An even more somber mood enters before
the music takes on a completely different character with its
distinctly folk-like quality before we are led back to the earlier
theme. The movement ends quietly, in the same calm manner
with which it began.
The fourth movement was probably written much earlier that the
rest of the symphony. Two themes return several times in
various forms, but before we hear the closing coda which rounds
off the symphony in a virtuoso manner, a last reminiscence of
the opening theme of the first movement makes its appearance
as if interrupting the flow of the music and calming the
atmosphere. The final section is then all the more thunderous,
bring the work to its end. The First Symphony of Zdenĕk Fibich
ends in a triumphal spirit.