Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884)
String Quartet No.1 in E Minor,
"From my Life"
String Quartet No.2 in D Minor
Two Pieces for Violin and Piano,
"From my Homeland"
The last ten years of Bedřich
Smetana’s life - he died at the age of 60 in 1884 - saw the gradual and total
breakdown of his health, and the composition of some of his greatest music. All
six symphonic poems in his cycle Má vlast, or ‘My country’, come from
this time; so do several operas, and both of the string quartets. He had
evolved a musical language that could lock into currents of national feeling
beyond the reach of other Czech composers, most famously in his opera The
Bartered Bride. He was a successful conductor and theatre administrator and
had become a central figure in the musical life of Prague. Yet the first signs
of illness were followed rapidly by the onset of deafness, which became
complete within a few months. Although he was able to stay active as a
musician, having the instincts and skills to continue performing with other players
and the capacity to follow performances of music he knew by ‘reading’ the
conductor’s beat, his last years became a struggle to keep mind as well as body
together.
As far as the string quartets are
concerned this case history is entirely relevant, for it affected the substance
as well as the emotional ambience of the music. You do not need to know that
No.1 has a story-telling element in order to enjoy and appreciate a work that
follows the tradition of Schubert in many ways: there are echoes in the harmony,
in the static, brooding music of the opening and in the vigorous outbursts at
the centre of the first movement. Smetana’s personal voice is clear in his
turns of phrase and in the tight, foreshortened qualities of his large-scale
forms. At the end, the reassembly and transformation of themes from earlier in
the quartet is a practice that became increasingly common in 19th-century music
after the symphonic poems and piano concertos of Liszt.
Smetana himself thought that the music’s
autobiographical programme was essentially a private matter. There are strong
dramatic undertones in the way that the buoyant finale suddenly collapses and
ends in a subdued mood that seems to embody a sense of loss. Even so, there are
strictly musical reasons why this should appear to be so: ideas from the first
and last movements, initially radiant and confident, are slowed down and shown
to be related. What remains unexplained is the wrench with which it happens,
and the shrill, sustained high note that emerges on the violin. ‘I permitted
myself this little joke because it was so disastrous to me " Smetana wrote
wryly to a friend. He admitted that the note represented a high-pitched
whistling that occurred inside his head every day when his deafness was
starting. It is not a literal depiction -he told another friend that the noise
was a chord of A flat. But he did go on to say that other aspects of the
quartet symbolise, in a broad way, the course of his life. In the first
movement it was a leaning towards art and inexpressible yearning for something
I could neither express nor define, and also a kind of warning of my future
misfortune’ (and here he quotes the striking first entry of the viola at the
start, which recurs at the finale’s collapse). The ‘quasi-polka’ of the second
movement signals youthful joy, especially in dancing; the slow movement
reminded him of first love, and the main part of the finale describes the
elation of discovering he could instil national elements into his music.
He wrote the quartet at the end of 1876,
some two years after the deafness had struck, and it was first performed in
March 1879. The second quartet dates from 1882-83, when he had great difficulty
in keeping up sustained work - his doctor had in fact told him not to compose
at all for the time being, and not even to read for more than a quarter of an
hour. He was aware of his mental decline and failing memory, and had to keep
re-reading what he had just written. Again there is a dimension of personal
history, though a less specific one, relating to his state of psychological
turbulence. It is hard to see how things could have been otherwise: themes
emerge impulsively and alternate rather than interact or develop, and if the
first quartet was sometimes elliptical in character the second is positively
gnomic. Its most extended movement is the single relatively easy-going one,
another polka, this time interspersed with calls like the Flying Dutchman’s
and a slow, singing central section. But the rest proceeds in alternations of
fast and slow, in epigrammatic utterances and occasional flights of tenderness
or passion. Nominally in D minor, it spends most of its first few minutes
establishing itself with increasing certainty in F major, then in the finale it
reverses the process, with the D turning major for a lively conclusion.
This movement takes two or three minutes
to play, yet it is so concisely worked for most of the way that players often
make a cut just before the end, since the coda seems disproportionately long.
There are imbalances in the previous movement between reflective tendencies and
a positively operatic ferocity. Yet the unbiased ear, encountering the quartet
for the first time, will surely hear it as radical and original, with its roots
in the late quartets of Beethoven, which also have their irrational and
epigrammatic side. The initial flourish and sweet answer, for instance, are
essentially two aspects of the same idea, which works its way closely through
the first movement; and the apparently baffling shape could be interpreted as a
concise sonata movement which lacks a central development but instead takes off
with a new episode after the reprise.
The quartet had its first performance in
January 1884. Not everybody could make sense of it at the time; but with
hindsight we can see clearly where both Smetana’s quartets stand in the
burgeoning progress of Czech music. For where would Janácek’s chamber music be
without the terse changes of direction, the national flavour, the sense of
being the diary of a soul?
Smetana’s two attractive duos for
violin and piano under the title Z domoviny (From my home, or homeland)
date from 1880 - between the quartets. Complexity is kept at bay here by a
folk-flavoured lyricism, though the second of them has its share of vivacious,
dancing surprises. The pieces are dedicated to Prince Alexander Thurn- Taxis,
who belonged to a family that had provided the composer with patronage before,
and on this occasion gave him in return a decorated ivory snuff-box.
Moyzes Quartet
The Moyzes Quartet was established in
1975 while the members of the quartet were still students at The Conservatory
in Bratislava. The ensemble was able to participate in various courses abroad
before winning prizes in Bratislava, Florence, Evian and elsewhere. Since 1982 the
quartet has appeared in concerts at home and abroad, with tours of Bulgaria,
Italy, France and West Germany.
The members of the Moyzes Quartet,
Stanislav Mucha, Frantisek Torok, Alexander Lakatos and Ján Slvik are employed
as an ensemble of the Slovak Philharmonic, it’s name commemorating the
distinguished Slovak composer Alexander Moyzes, who was director of Bratislava
Conservatory until 1971 and as a teacher fostered a whole generation of Slovak
composers.
Takako Nishizaki
Takako Nishizaki is one of Japan’s finest
violinists. After studying with her father, Shinji Nishizaki, she became the
first student of Shinichi Suzuki, the creator of the famous Suzuki Method of
violin teaching for children. Subsequently she went to Japan’s famous Toho
School of Music, and to the Juilliard School in the United States, where she
studied with Joseph Fuchs.
Takako Nishizaki is one of the most
frequently recorded violinists in the world today. She has recorded ten volumes
of her complete Fritz Kreisler Edition, many contemporary Chinese violin
concertos, among them the Concerto by Du Ming-xin, dedicated to her, and a
growing number of rare, previously unrecorded violin concertos, among them
concertos by Spohr, Beriot, Cui, Respighi, Rubinstein and Joachim. For Naxos she
has recorded Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Mozart’s Violin Concertos, Sonatas by
Mozart and Beethoven and the Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Bruch and
Brahms Concertos.
Tatiana Franová
Born in Slovakia, Tatiana Franová went on
to study at the Bratislava Conservatory, the College of Music and Drama in
Bratislava and the Vienna Music Academy. From 1983 to 1987 she held the
position of Professor at the Academy of Art in Cairo.
Tatiana Franová has given concerts all
around the world from India and the Soviet Union to Cuba and Brazil.
