Czech Mates



Antonin Dvorák
1841-1904

Antonin Dvorák
Symphony No. 6 in D Major, Op. 60

Given his current stature as one of the foremost composers of the nineteenth century, Antonín Dvorák was something of a late bloomer, but not for want of musical talent and promise. Dvorák’s father was a butcher and had expected his son to go into the family trade. Only after his uncle had agreed to finance the boy’s musical education was he able to follow his passion for music. Although trained as a church organist, his first job was as a performer, playing principal viola in Prague’s new Provincial Theatre Orchestra. During this time, he practiced composition, producing songs, symphonies and entire operas but without recognition – much less appreciation – until he was in his 30s.

After winning several national prizes during the 1870s, however, his work came to the attention of Johannes Brahms, who gave him his first real break. The older composer, whose reputation was at its height, promoted Dvorák to his own publisher, Simrock, who offered the young composer his first commission, the Opus 46 set of Slavonic Dances. Brahms and the music critic Eduard Hanslick urged him to move to Vienna, but his love for his native Bohemia kept him in Prague. Like his older compatriot Bedrich Smetana, Dvorák freely incorporated folk elements into his music, utilizing characteristic peasant rhythms and melodic motives but never actually quoting entire folk melodies.

Another prominent musician who took great interest in Dvorák’s music was Hans Richter, the famed conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic. Following the successful premiere of the Slavonic Rhapsody No. 3 (Op.45/3), Richter asked Dvorák to compose a symphony for Vienna. The result was the Symphony No. 6, composed in white heat between August and October 1880 and dedicated to Richter. Sadly, the musicians of the Vienna Philharmonic refused to perform a second premiere in two years by the “outsider” from the Bohemian provinces, leaving it to the Prague Philharmonic to do the honors in 1881 (Seventy years later – even after the collapse of Nazism – the Vienna Philharmonic musicians refused to perform the symphonies of Gustav Mahler, a Czech Jew, until Leonard Bernstein practically forced it on them). Richter finally conducted it in London the following year. It was Dvorák’s first symphony to propel him to international fame. Since Dvorák’s five earlier symphonies had remained unpublished, the Sixth was originally published as Symphony No. 1.

Especially in the sweep of the first movement, The Symphony pays homage to Brahms’s Symphony No. 2; Dvorák spins out a stream of melodies that are accompanied by easily recognizable Brahmsian harmonic progressions. One of the hallmarks of this Symphony is that Dvorák’s practice of developing short motivic fragments throughout an entire movement.

The Symphony opens with a little syncopated ostinato motive in the horns and violas that sets up a cross rhythm against the main theme introduced by an oboe duet with echo from bassoons and cellos.

Throughout the movement, the composer makes use of two motives that form part of this theme.

and an accompaniment figure in the oboes

. A lilting cello theme

serves as a bridge on the way to the principal secondary theme introduced by the solo oboe (note that this theme includes the little upbeat figure in ex. 3.)

The development casts a shadow on the otherwise sunny atmosphere, beginning by combining the two principal themes in the minor.

But most of the development concerns itself with the motive from ex. 3.

Dvorak swings back to the recapitulation shortly after the halfway mark of the movement, leaving room for further harmonic wanderings in an extended coda.

The Adagio is built essentially on a single expansive theme

that contains within it several shorter melodic ideas. The three-note motive that opens the movement is a hint that the movement will concentrate on variations and transformations of brief fragments, rather than a series of substantial themes.

At only one point does a burst of anguish break the tranquil mood.

The Scherzo is a furiant, a Czech folk dance and could be easily mistaken for one of the Slavonic Dances.

After the repeat of the brief first strain, the second strain is exceptionally long and chock full of new melodies and harmonic wanderings. The Trio is distantly related to a fragment of the Scherzo melody, but instead of the Scherzo’s exuberant rhythm and full orchestration, Dvorák reduces it to an almost Rococo theme for the upper winds with a rumbling accompaniment in the basses.

He then adds a second Trio, a melancholy waltz,

as a transition back to the repeat of the Scherzo.

The Finale is another sonata form that recalls Brahms even more than the first movement, the opening sounding much like the Finale of Brahms’s Second Symphony.

However, the second, and dominant, theme is a distinctly Bohemian dance.

The interplay between the Germanic and Czech motives continues throughout the movement, especially in the fugue of the second theme and breakneck speed of the triumphant coda.



Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
1840-1893

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35

“Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto raises for the first time the ghastly idea that there are pieces of music that one can hear stinking... [the finale] transports us into the brutish grim jollity of a Russian church festival. In our mind’s eye we see nothing but common, ravaged faces, hear rough oaths and smell cheap liquor.” This politically incorrect assessment comes from the pen of the dean of nineteenth century music critics, Eduard Hanslick, reviewing the Concerto’s Vienna premiere.

Why did the Concerto premiere in Vienna and not St. Petersburg? It is difficult to believe that this Concerto, probably the most popular in the literature, was declared to contain passages that were “almost impossible to play” by its first dedicatee, the famed violinist and violin teacher Leopold Auer, concertmaster of the Imperial Orchestra in St. Petersburg. Completed in 1878, it had to wait for three years for its premiere in Vienna where Hanslick was not alone in his opinion.

What Hanslick and the other critics disliked most is what makes the Concerto so appealing today: its athletic energy, unabashed romanticism and rousing Slavic finale. Without diminishing our own enjoyment of the Concerto, attempting to hear it with the ears of its first audience is a fascinating exercise in cultural relativity. First of all, consider the sheer difficulty of the piece. What defeated Russia’s leading violin virtuoso is the stuff teenage prodigies cut their teeth on at Juilliard and Curtis, practicing the killer bits ad nauseam until they get it right or find some other career.

Then there’s the fact that there was no love lost between the two great nineteenth-century imperial behemoths, Russia and Austria-Hungary, who continued to slug it out until the end of World War I. That Tchaikovsky disliked Johannes Brahms, Hanslick’s favorite composer, probably also added fuel to the fire. At the time of the Concerto’s inception, Tchaikovsky was just emerging from under the black cloud of his disastrous marriage. The vibrant energy of the Concerto, however, seems to have been inspired by the visit of Josif Kotek, a young violinist, pupil and protégé who managed to raise the composer’s spirits and helped him with the Concerto, giving advice on technical matters.

It opens with a brief, gentle introduction with motivic germ of the main theme.

After some virtuosic fireworks, the emerging second theme is surprisingly similar in mood to the first.

The development, full of technical acrobatics, leads into the very difficult cadenza that the composer wrote himself.

The slow movement was Tchaikovsky's second try; he discarded his first attempt, eventually publishing it separately as a violin and piano piece, Op.42, no.3. It opens with a gentle melancholy song on the woodwinds that pervades the movement.

The violin enters with an equally wistful counter-melody

that renders the seamless merge into the raucous Final such a surprise.

It is the unabashed use of Russian peasant dance rhythms in the third movement that so upset Vienna's critics but which was even at the time becoming a signature of much Russian orchestral music. Another peculiar bit that must have raised a few Viennese eyebrows is the spectacular cadenza that follows immediately on the fiery orchestral introduction

and leads right into the main theme. This quick-footed dance demands of the soloist enormous agility and rhythmic control. After a second dance that ramps up on speed like a typical Cossack trepak,

there follows another slower lyrical section introduced by solo oboe and taken up by clarinet, bassoon and finally the violin.

The Concerto concludes, of course, with flash and flamboyance.

At the time of the Concerto's inception, Tchaikovsky was just emerging from under the black cloud of a disastrous marriage to an emotionally unstable woman who threatened suicide if he refused to marry her. It was also undertaken to silence rumors about his homosexuality. The vibrant energy of the Concerto, however, seems to have been inspired by the visit of a young violinist pupil and protégé who managed to raise the composer's spirits and helped him with the Concerto, giving advice on technical matters.

2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, strings