Violin Concerto Opus 53 B.96

Antonin Dvorak 1841-1904

Dvorak was a composer of romantic music, who often incorporated the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia into his works. Dvorak’s father was a butcher and sometime player of the zither, who hoped that his son would follow his footsteps as a butcher, but Antonin had other ideas. Dvorak studied the organ and became an accomplished player of the violin and viola. He started playing professionally at the age of eighteen, and wrote his first string quartet when he was twenty. Dvorak played the viola in the Bohemian Provisional Theater Orchestra, which was conducted by Bedrich Smetana for some of the time Dvorak was there. There can be little doubt working with the father of the Czech style of music would have had a profound impact on Dvorak’s compositions. Johannes Brahms was an admirer of Dvorak’s work, and was also a tremendous influence on Dvorak, and the two composers became good friends. Dvorak spent a number of years working and teaching in New York. Some of Dvorak’s better known works include the New World Symphony, Slavonic Dances, American String Quartet, Cello Concerto in B Minor, and the choral work Stabat Mater.

The Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in A minor, was the second of the three concertos that Dvorak composed and orchestrated. Dvorak had met the great violinist Joseph Joachim in 1878 and decided to write a concerto for him. It was finished in 1879, but Joachim was skeptical of the way the work was constructed, and never played the piece that had been written for him. The concerto was premiered in 1883 in Prague by the violinist Frantisek Ondricek, who also gave its first performances in Vienna and London.

“Smetana was the one who founded Czech music, but Anton Dvorak was the one who popularized it.” (Schonberg)

Ma Vlast

Bedrich Smetana 1824-1884

Smetana developed a musical style that became closely idenitified with his country’s aspirations to independent statehood from the Austrian Empire. His first examples of this nationalistic music was written in 1848, in part as a result of Smetana’s experience as a member of the Svornost (Citizen’s Army) where he helped man the barricades on the Charles Bridge against the troops of Emperor Ferdinand.

Ma Vlast (My Country or My Fatherland) is a series of six symphonic poems that Smetana wrote between 1874 and 1879, and is the first of his large scale works that are independent of words. Although often performed as a single work in six movements, each of the movements were written as a separate entity and had separate premieres. The complete set was first performed on November 5, 1882. At this performance “Everyone rose to their feet and the same storm of undending applause was repeated after each of the six parts. At the end of Blanik (The final part) the audience was beside itself and the people could not bring themselves to take leave of the composer.” What is remarkable is that Smetana had become completely deaf by the end of 1874, before much of Ma Vlast had been written.

In the winter of 1882-83 Smetana began to suffer from depression, insomnia, hallucinations, and a temporary loss of speech. In February 1884 Smetana ceased to be coherent and was committed to an asylum in April of that year, where he passed away the following month.

Bohemia’s Forests and Meadows

First performed on December 10, 1875, this piece describes the beauty of the Czech countryside, in the form of a tone poem that tells no real story, but includes a section evoking the grandeur of the forest, and the depiction of a village festival.

Blanik

First performed on January 4, 1880, this piece is named for the mountain Blanik, inside which legend says that an army of knights led by St. Wenceslas sleep. The story goes that the knights will awake and help the country in its time of greatest need. Smetana uses the theme from a Hussite hymn that makes reference to the eventual victorious rise of the Czech nation.

The Moldau

First perormed on April 4 1875, Smetana utilized tone painting in one of his best known and internationally famous tunes, an adaptation of La Mantovana, to evoke the sounds of the great rivers of Bohemia.

Before Alline

Michael Miller 1932-

Originally from Portugal, Miller taught piano, composition, and theory at Mount Allison University, where he was awarded Professor Emeritus status. The composition Before Alline, written in 1989, is part of a three act opera about the effects of the American Revolutionary War on the Maritimes. The opera is based on the life of Henry Alline, a New Light preacher and itinerant evangalist in Nova Scotia at the time of the Revolution. Around Alline had it’s premiere in February 1990, in a performance by the music department of Mount Allison University.

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