Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884). “Vltava” (“The Moldau”) from Má vlast (My
Fatherland). Composed 1874. First performed 4 April 1875. Scored for 2
flutes (second doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2
trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (triangle, bass drum,
cymbals), harp, and strings.
Smetana, known as the father of Czech music, was born in Bohemia, a kingdom
within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in a town called Litomyšl, about 85 miles east
of Prague. Today Bohemia forms the central part of the Czech Republic.
With the defeat of the Bohemian Revolt in 1620, followed by the Thirty Years’
War, Bohemian hopes for religious freedom and independence from the AustroHungarian Empire were dashed, and Czech autonomy took another serious blow
when German was proclaimed the official administrative language of Bohemia. In
the 19th century, when nationalist movements were sweeping Europe, Czech
language and culture saw a rebirth. Between the end of World War I and World War
II, Czechoslovakia became an independent nation, then passed fifty years as a Soviet
“satellite” before regaining its independence in 1989.
As a child, Smetana was a prodigy on the piano. Superstar pianist Franz Liszt
took an interest in him and encouraged him to open a piano school in Prague.
Though he spent about five years in Sweden, and though he hadn’t grown up
speaking Czech, Smetana was deeply involved in the revival of Czech language and
culture. His second opera, The Bartered Bride (1870), uses traditional Czech folk
dance forms and melodies that resemble folk tunes. The characters are realistic
village folk—a pair of young lovers determined to be together despite their parents’
ambitions and the machinations of a marriage broker. Eventually, the opera gained
global acclaim and, for years, was the only Czech opera in the repertoire.
Smetana went completely deaf ten years before his life was over. This
hardship did not stop him from composing his masterwork: a series of six
symphonic poems collectively called Má Vlast (My Homeland). Composed and
premiered separately between 1874 and 1879, each work takes its inspiration from
a different aspect of Bohemian/Czech culture, landscape, or history.
“Vyšehrad” (“The High Castle”) was composed while Smetana was in the
process of losing his hearing. The castle used to sit on a huge rock overlooking the
Vltava and guarding the entrance to Prague. The work evokes the brave deeds once
performed there before the destruction of the castle, which symbolizes Bohemian
national identity and pride.
“Vltava,” Prague’s River, known as in German as “The Moldau,” expresses the
renewed strength and unified spirit of Bohemia with its magisterial theme. (This is
the section we will hear tonight.)
“Šárka” is named after an Amazon-like woman warrior figure from Czech
mythology. A rebel leader, she serves drugged wine to the enemy troops assigned to
put down her rebellion and then slaughters them all.
“Z českých luhů a hájů” depicts the beauty of “Bohemia’s woods and fields” as
a young peasant girl walks through a meadow, hearing the birds sing, on her way to
a harvest celebration.
“Tábor” is named for a Hussite fortress-city in the south of Bohemia, and
“Blaník,” is the mountain where, it is said, a Hussite army sleeps that will awake
when the country is in dire need. (The Hussites, followers of Jan Hus, were
Bohemian forerunners of the Protestant Reformation.) These last two movements,
musically interconnected, recall the 17th-century religious wars after which
Bohemia was once again subjected to Catholicism and the Austro-Hungarian
Empire.
“Vltava” is composed in the form of a rondo (i.e., an opening theme, based on
a Swedish folk tune, with variations) and a coda. If you listen carefully to the
different sections, you can hear the “program,” or loose storyline, for the music,
written by Václav Zeleny:
This composition depicts the course of the Moldau. It sings of
its first two springs, one warm the other cold, rising in the
Bohemian forest, watches the streams as they join and follows
the flow of the river through fields and woods...[to] a meadow
where the peasants are celebrating a wedding. In the silver
moonlight the river nymphs frolic, castles and palaces float
past, as well as ancient ruins growing out of the wild cliffs. The
Moldau foams and surges in the Rapids of St. John, then flows
in a broad stream toward Prague. Vysehrad Castle appears [the
four-note theme from the first of the six symphonic poems] on
its banks. The river strives on majestically, lost to view, finally
yielding itself up to the Elbe.
Throughout the piece, listen for the flutes and strings evoking flowing water,
whether wild or gentle, against the stately, melancholy theme.
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943). Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 18, in C minor.
Composed 1900-1901. First performed 9 November 1901 in Moscow. Scored
for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones,
tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals), and strings.
It is difficult to imagine the piano repertoire today without Rachmaninoff’s lush,
romantic, and deeply felt Piano Concerto No. 2, but the truth is that it was almost not
written, due to an unfortunate inaugural performance of Rachmaninoff’s Symphony
No. 1.
Composer Alexander Glazunov (1865-1936)—by all accounts, a pleasant,
dedicated man and a fine composer—possessed conducting skills that left much to
be desired. When, with insufficient rehearsal time, he conducted the premiere of
Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony in 1897, he brought disaster down upon the work—
which was not performed again during Rachmaninoff’s lifetime—and the
composer—who spent the premiere crouched on a staircase with his hands over his
ears. Rachmaninoff’s wife later claimed that Glazunov was drunk, but Rachmaninoff
himself blamed Glazunov’s musicianship: “I am amazed—how can a man with the
high talent of Glazunov conduct so badly?” There was also the matter of Russian
politics—Rachmaninoff, being from Moscow, was not automatically sure to please
rival critics in St. Petersburg, where the concert took place.
Unfortunately, Rachmaninoff—highly insecure and quick to doubt the
success of his own work—internalized the criticisms of others, even when they
were incorrect or vicious. The poor performance of his First Symphony, which, one
critic claimed “would delight the inhabitants of Hell,” sent Rachmaninoff into a deep
depression, accompanied by heavy drinking and an inability to compose, that lasted
three years.
Pressure was mounting: Rachmaninoff had promised the London Symphony
a piano concerto, and he had not even been able to start it. Remedies suggested by
friends and family were tried and rejected, until finally Dr. Nikolai Dahl, an internist
and fine viola player, came on the scene with a modern cure based on cutting-edge
work being done in Paris by Sigmund Freud’s teacher, Jean-Marie Charcot—
hypnosis.
Dr. Dahl’s hypnotic suggestions, on the order of, “You will begin your
concerto...it will be excellent,” seem to provide Rachmaninoff with the positive
reinforcement he needed. “Although it may seem incredible,” Rachmaninoff wrote
later, “this cure helped me.” He dedicated the concerto to the man who had saved it.
The second and third movements were performed first at a benefit concert in
December 1900. Rachmaninoff had caught a cold, so a helpful friend made him drink
too much mulled wine the night before, but he still managed to play well. The entire
concerto had its first performance nearly a year later. Before the premiere, an old
classmate of Rachmaninoff’s nearly managed to derail his newly recovered selfconfidence by criticizing the way the second theme in the first movement is
introduced. “I’m simply in despair! Why did you bother me with your analysis five
days before the performance?!?” Rachmaninoff wrote desperately. But he needn’t
have worried; once the concerto was performed before the public—in Moscow this
time—its success was unqualified.
Considering other pieces written around the same time, the Second Piano
Concerto looks back towards Romanticism rather than forward towards 20thcentury Modernism. Dvořák had only written his “New World” Symphony seven
years earlier, and the operas Tosca and Louise both premiered in 1900; Mahler’s
Symphony No. 4 premiered the year after this concerto. Debussy’s impressionistic
tone poem La mer was written in 1903-5, but Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” was
not performed until 1913, when it nearly caused a riot at the theater. The beauty,
ease, and melancholy yearning of the Piano Concerto No. 2 have made it a favorite
with audiences since Rachmaninoff played it over a century ago, and the tunes have
been borrowed many times for use in popular music.
The first movement begins with high drama that cannot fail to grab the
audience’s attention: eight chords alternating with the tolling bell of the piano’s low
F, starting pianissimo and gradually increasing in volume to fortissimo. The piano’s
next broken arpeggios are marked “con passione” (with passion), and are played
against—and as reinforcement for—a simple, passionate melody in the violins and
clarinet—the first theme. The piano’s next entrance introduces the second theme
(and this is where Rachmaninoff’s school friend fretted that audiences wouldn’t
recognize that the orchestra had introduced the first theme by itself). This brief
movement is full of passion—expressed through tempo and key changes—and
simple melodies that provide moments of stillness and beauty that are then
developed in tempestuous passages. The relationship between the piano and the
orchestra is more equal than might have been expected, with the piano playing
virtuoso accompaniment to the orchestra’s melodies as often as standout solo
passages. In the recapitulation, the piano restates the opening theme and the
orchestra plays the second theme as an accompaniment, a reversal of the beginning.
Following a piano solo, a descending chromatic scale leads to a languid horn solo.
The following bars are calm and still until the agitated coda, which ends the
movement.
The second movement, marked “allegro sostenuto-piu animato-Tempo I”
(sustained allegro-more animated-return to the original tempo), begins with a
subdued orchestral introduction. When the piano enters, playing arpeggios, the flute
and clarinet take turns playing the theme before the piano has a chance at it, while
the clarinet in turn plays arpeggios. The theme is passed between the piano and
other sections of the orchestra until the music suddenly becomes louder and edgier,
passing through a series of unsettled passages where the tempo and volume
increase. A final quickening leads to a dramatic piano cadenza and a return to
tranquility for the end of the movement, which the soloist finishes alone. (The motif
from this movement was borrowed for the song “All By Myself” by Eric Carmen, the
cover of which, by Celine Dion, is lip-synced by the self-pitying heroine in the film
“Bridget Jones’ Diary.”)
The third movement is played “allegro scherzando” (in a “joking” or playful
allegro). It opens with a quick, quiet march played by the strings, increasing quickly
in volume until the bass drum and cymbals play four splashy strokes that introduce
a brief piano cadenza. The piano then plays the first theme several times, each with
different, lively accompaniment in the orchestra. Things quiet down for the
statement and restatement of the lovely second theme, which will sound familiar
whether you’ve heard this concerto before or not. (Buddy Kaye and Ted Mossman
borrowed it for their hit song “Full Moon and Empty Arms”—first, and most
famously, performed in 1945 by Frank Sinatra, although many others have recorded
it, including—just this year—Bob Dylan.)
A meandering passage by piano, punctuated by winds and backed by held
notes by strings, creates suspense for the exciting development of the first theme,
which includes a quick, witty fugue on the way to a long, lively passage where all the
sections of the orchestra get a chance to shine in sharing playing bits of the first
theme with the piano. All this leads us to the luscious second theme again.
The two themes seem to compete for our attention: the percussive, marchlike first theme grabs us with a wealth of virtuosity and fresh, breathtaking
invention—pure fun!—while the romantic theme serves as a chance to pause and
sigh and prepare for the next salvo.
The next to last statement of the romantic theme takes us to a slow, quiet,
suspenseful passage that leads back into quick time, and from there to a series of
octaves and an accelerando to one final statement of the romantic theme, before an
exciting race to the finish.
Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904). Symphony No. 9, Op. 95, in E minor, “From the
New World.” Composed 1893. First performed 16 December 1893 in Carnegie
Hall. Scored for 2 flutes (second doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 2
clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani,
percussion (triangle, cymbals), and strings.
When Jeanette M. Thurber, whose husband had made a fortune in the grocery
business, founded her National Conservatory of Music in New York, she did it with
specific goals in mind. At the time, American culture, especially music, was a poor
stepchild to European culture, receiving little or no respect around the world. Mrs.
Thurber wanted to change all that by planting the seeds for what she hoped would
be a national music, built from the folk themes of the North American continent—
the “New World.” Ironically, Mrs. Thurber hired Dvořák, known for his use of Czech
folk tunes in his music. Rather than turning to a homegrown composer, Mrs.
Thurber fell back on the European model in her attempt to break away from it.
Although the conservatory founded on this naïve but noble dream did not
last much past the turn of the 20th century, Mrs. Thurber had the vision to integrate
her school by allowing people of African and Native-American ancestry to enroll as
students. Henry T. Burleigh, a young African-American student, educated Dvořák
about traditional spirituals while Dvořák taught him musical composition. Dvořák’s
exposure to Native-American music was more tentative, and basically consisted of a
trip to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Dvořák was apparently also inspired by
Longfellow’s epic poem Song of Hiawatha, which, of course, has less to do with
actual Native-American culture than with a romanticized vision based on the
European pastoral tradition.
Commentators who have looked for references to specific tunes in the New
World Symphony have been disappointed. Although Dvořák believed that
composers should seek inspiration in the traditional music of their cultures, he did
not make his symphony a patchwork of folksong snippets, but rather used the
traditional music he had studied for inspiration that helped him to capture the
flavor of American culture. He wrote: “I have simply written original themes
embodying the peculiarities of Indian music, and using these themes as subjects,
have developed them with all the resources of modern rhythms, harmony,
counterpoint, and orchestral color.” When he returned home, Dvořák no longer
seemed eager to discuss American influences on his work.
How would we react to Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 if we had no idea of its
origin? It is unlikely that we would hear anything intrinsically “American” about it.
Rather, it resembles Dvořák’s other work—with echoes of Beethoven, Schubert, and
other composers in the European tradition—more strongly than it resembles later
American works. Kurt Masur said that the New World Symphony is one of the great
tragic 19th-century symphonies because it reflects the pain of Dvořák’s
homesickness. Rather than being the first American symphony, Dvořák’s Symphony
No. 9 belongs to a long line of musical compositions that reflect a gifted tourist’s
feelings about the place he is visiting, which, in this case, just happened to be the
United States of America.
The first movement begins with a muted theme in the strings that is
interrupted by a horn call, then taken up again by the winds. Strings, timpani and
brass interject an ominous note and, after a suspenseful preparation, the first theme
is introduced and developed. The flute introduces the second theme while the
strings play octaves. Both of these themes are reminiscent of American folk songs
and spirituals, but both are Dvořák’s invention. The second theme is developed and
echoed among the winds, brass and strings until the first theme rejoins it.
Throughout the symphony, many of the themes end on the same note they began
with, giving them a plaintive feel. The majestic and yet tragic feelings evoked by this
movement carry us along on a tide of emotion to the powerful and stormy coda.
In the second movement, the brass plays a slow, rising scale ending in a roll
by the timpani that prepares the way for a now famous English horn solo. This
theme has been also compared to African-American spirituals. (Some
commentators have been fooled by the fact that an authentic-sounding but bogus
“spiritual” called “Goin’ Home” was written using this melody by one of Dvořák’s
white students.) The movement’s central section is a poignant pastoral that has
been compared to the funeral march in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, but the birdlike voices of the winds give it a sense of yearning absent from its musical ancestor.
Dvořák echoes the first movement before the main theme returns in the strings. By
making us wait several times for the continuation of the melody, he makes silence as
eloquent as sound.
The scherzo movement lightens the mood and, with its skipping rhythms,
forms the perfect contrast to the second movement’s sustained melodies.
The final movement is the most important of the four in every sense, and the
least likely to recall American folk themes. Starting from a new, forceful theme, it
recalls themes from the other movements, uniting them into a teeming musical
structure that manages to be both a completion and a new direction. It struck such a
forceful chord with American audiences that the New World Symphony is one of the
most frequently performed symphonies in the repertoire in this country, even
today. (This is a revised version of program notes from April 2005.)
©2005 and 2015 Mary Eichbauer