Dvorak

Dvořák’s String Sextet in A Major: A Walk Through Czech Lands

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After hearing Antonín Dvořák’s String Sextet in A Major, Op. 48 in 1941, conductor Václav Talich was overcome with the pure beauty of the work, exclaiming, “Beautiful musical ideas, a beautiful structure and a beautiful sound! God himself must have been walking the Czech Lands when his humble servant Dvořák bequeathed to us a work of such excellence and sanctity…” Filled with the Slavonic folk influences, the Sextet is the enchanting music …

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Dvořák’s “Othello” Overture: Love and Tragedy

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Before the epic film score, there was the tone poem of 19th century Romanticism. This music often abandons traditional formal structures. As with cinematic scores to come, it unfolds in a way that is governed by the dramatic sweep of the story. With sudden mood swings, it offers a rollercoaster ride of emotion, and evokes cinematic imagery. Antonín Dvořák’s 1892 concert overture, Othello, Op. 93, falls into this category. It was conceived as …

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Remembering Christoph von Dohnányi

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Christoph von Dohnányi, the German conductor and longtime music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, passed away last Saturday, September 6, two days shy of his 96th birthday. Dohnányi was born in Berlin into a high profile family.  His grandfather was Ernst von Dohnányi, a Hungarian composer and pianist. His uncle was the Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In 1945, when Dohnányi was 15 years old, his father and uncle were sent to a …

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Dvořák’s “The Noon Witch”: A Slavic Horror Story Told Through Music

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In Slavic mythology, Polednice, the Noon Witch, is a demonic figure who is known to emerge in the middle of the hottest summer days, causing farmers working in the fields to suffer heatstroke or insanity. The poem, Polednice, by the Czech folklorist, Karel Jaromír Erben (1811-1870), tells the story of a mother who, while preparing lunch, is desperate to quiet a young child who screams for attention. She warns her son that …

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Dvořák’s Piano Trio No. 3 in F Minor: Reaching a Creative Pinnacle

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Antonín Dvořák had weathered personal tragedy and intense inner conflict when, in 1883, he composed the Piano Trio No. 3 in F minor, Op. 65. Dvořák began work on the Trio six months after the death of his mother, with whom he had been especially close. The premature loss of three of his young children was still a fresh memory. As a composer, Dvořák, who enjoyed the support of Johannes Brahms, was …

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“Songs My Mother Taught Me”: From Dvořák to Ives

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Songs My Mother Taught Me is the fourth and most famous of Antonín Dvořák’s seven-song cycle, Gypsy Songs, Op. 55. Composed in 1880 at the request of the Viennese tenor, Gustav Walter, the texts are from a collection of poems by Adolf Heyduk. Songs My Mother Taught Me highlights the timelessness of music, and enduring truths, passed lovingly through generations: Songs my mother taught me in the days long vanished, Seldom from her eyelids were …

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Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 12 in F Major: The “American”

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During the summer of 1893, Antonín Dvořák took his habitual morning walks, not through the meadows of his native Bohemia, but into the vast, rolling prairie of northeastern Iowa. It was here, in the small Czech immigrant enclave of Spillville, that Dvořák completed the “New World” Symphony, and then, in just over two weeks, wrote his String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, Op. 96. Having relocated from Prague the previous September …

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