Program Notes
BEDŘICH SMETANA
VLTAVA (“THE MOLDAU”) FROM MÁ VLAST
(“MY COUNTRY”)
Duration: ca. 12 minutes
The Moldau (“Vltava” in Czech) is the principal river of
Czechoslovakia, rising in the hills in the south and flowing
north through Prague to join with the Elbe. Smetana’s tone
poem seems to trace its inspiration to a country trip he took
along the river in 1870, a junket that included an exhilarating
boat ride through the churning waters of the St. John Rapids.
Smetana’s Moldau is disposed in several sections intended to
convey both the sense of a journey down the river and some of
the sights seen along the way, as he noted in a preface to the
score: “Two springs pour forth in the shade of the Bohemian
Forest, one warm and gushing, the other cold and peaceful.
Their waves, gaily flowing over rocky beds, join and glisten
in the rays of the morning sun. The forest brook, hastening
on, becomes the river Moldau. Coursing through Bohemia’s
valleys, it grows into a mighty stream. Through thick woods
it flows, as the gay sounds of the hunt and the notes of the
hunter’s horn are heard ever nearer. It flows through grassgrown
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 bygone days of
knightly splendor and the vanished glory of fighting times.
At the St. John Rapids, the stream races ahead, winding
through the cataracts, hewing out a path with its foaming
waves through the rocky chasm into the broad river bed
— finally, flowing on in majestic peace toward Prague and
welcomed by the time-honored castle Vyšehrad. At this
point, Smetana recalled the main theme of an earlier tone
poem entirely devoted to depicting the ruined castle and its
aura of ancient battles and forgotten bards. Then it vanishes
far beyond the poet’s gaze.”
LEOŠ JANÁČEK
SINFONIETTA
Duration: ca. 24 minutes
Overview
In the summer of 1917, when he was 63, Leoš Janáček fell in
love with Kamila Stösslová, the 25-year-old wife of a Jewish
THE FLORIDA ORCHESTRA | 2017-2018
antiques dealer from Písek. They first met in a town in central
Moravia during the World War I, but, as he lived in Brno with
Zdenka, his wife of 37 years, and she lived with her husband
in Písek, they saw each other only infrequently thereafter and
remained in touch mostly by letter. The true passion seems to
have been entirely on his side (“It is fortunate that only I am
infatuated,” he once wrote to her), but Kamila did not reject
his company, apparently feeling admiration rather than love
for the man who, with the successful staging of his Jenůfa
in Prague in 1915 eleven years after its premiere in Brno,
was at that time acquiring an international reputation as a
master composer. Whatever the details of their relationship,
Kamila’s role as an inspiring muse during the last decade
of Janáček’s life was indisputable and beneficent — under
the sway of his feelings for her he wrote his greatest music,
including the operas Katya Kabanova, The Cunning Little
Vixen and The Makropoulos Affair, the song cycle The Diary of
the Young Man Who Disappeared, the two String Quartets (the
second of which he titled “Intimate Letters”), the Glagolitic
Mass and the Sinfonietta for Orchestra.
The conception of the Sinfonietta dates to Janáček’s visit with
Kamila in Písek during the summer of 1925. “One sunny day,”
recounted the composer’s biographer Jaroslav Vogel, “they
were sitting in the local park listening to a military band
concert. The well-rehearsed musicians played, among other
things, some fanfares which took Janáček’s fancy not only as
such but also by the way in which they were performed. The
players — possibly dressed in historical costumes — stood up
to play their solos and then sat down again. This refreshing
experience, enhanced by the close presence of Kamila and by
the park setting, made a deep impression on Janáček, who
afterwards referred to it continually in his letters to Kamila.”
The following winter, Janáček was approached by the Czech
patriotic and gymnastic society known as Sokol (“Falcon”) to
write some fanfares for their quadrennial national jamboree
to be held in Prague that summer. Bursting with national
pride ever since the freeing of Czechoslovakia from Austro-
Hungarian hegemony at the end of the First World War and
with the pleasant memory of the Písek band concert still in
his mind, he readily agreed to accept the commission. He
set about the project early in March 1926, beginning with a
stentorian fanfare for brass, but the piece quickly outgrew its
rather modest original purpose and blossomed into a fullfledged
symphonic essay spread across five movements. The
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