program - SVIZ

PROGRAM / PROGRAM
88
Reger’s chromaticism and Strauss’s orchestration), then his friend, musicologist
and composer Kodály, drew his attention to French music, especially that
of Debussy, while his final useful revelation was a deep involvement with folk
music. Thus Bartók wrote his First String Quartet still under the influence of
German romantic emotiveness, the Second Quartet brings a greater feeling
for colour, while the Third String Quartet is clearly marked by a conversion
to a more daring musical style.
The composer himself wrote that his Third Quartet brought a change in
aesthetic ideal: if he had earlier trusted Beethoven’s type of musical depth,
he was now more interested in perfect musical craft, as represented by the
music of Bach. The quartet is characterised by an extraordinary density of
musical ideas and originality of form. The traditional four movements are
combined into just one movement, in which it is possible to trace the outlines
of sonata form: the ‘Prima Parte’ presents the basic musical ideas, the ‘Seconda
Parte’ continues with an agitated development of the material, while
we can understand the following section as a varied and purified reprise with
a coda, combining all three thematic threads in a convincing conclusion. It
should also be noted that under the influence of Berg’s Lyric Suite, which
Bartók heard for the first time during this period, the composer treated the
sonority of the strings more freely. Thus we meet with various sonic effects
in the work: from glissando, pizzicato, playing on the bridge and strumming,
to muted tones and the use of exaggerated vibrato.
After 1871, when Dvořák resigned from his position as a violist in an opera
orchestra, he began to gradually gain recognition as a composer. First, however,
there was a bitter experience with the opera King and Charcoal Burner,
which was initially accepted by the theatre then subsequently abandoned
due to performance difficulties. However, Dvořák did not lose his creative
self-confidence, but instead fundamentally purified his musical expression.
He rejected Wagnerian influences and returned to the periodicity and formal
transparency of classical style, while with increasing frequency gracing his
works with melodic material from Slavonic folklore. With the exception of
the new version of the opera King and Charcoal Burner, about which the
composer himself wrote that it was “now more national than Wagnerian”,
this stylistic change was conceived in the medium of chamber music.
The Quintet, Op. 77 (the work first bore the opus number 18, but in the edition
published in 1888 the publisher Simrock incorrectly printed the number 77)
was written in 1875 for the composition competition ‘My People’, which was
prepared within the framework of the cultural events known as ‘Umeùlecká
beseda’. Originally the work had five movements, but prior to printing Dvořák
omitted the ‘Intermezzo’. The composition is marked by an economy of means
and an extraordinary thematic density, giving it almost symphonic dimensions.
In the first movement the solo viola presents the main motive, which
represents a starting point for the entire movement. The second movement
is an energetic scherzo with Czech colouring, the slow movement brings
a delicate dialogue between the instruments, while the finale, in the form