Bedřich
Smetana (1824-1884)
Orchestral
Highlights from Operas
Bedřich
Smetana is a figure of the greatest importance in the development of Czech
music, creating and inspiring a synthesis of native tradition and the classical
forms of music in which he had been trained. Born in 1824, the eleventh child
and the first son to survive infancy of a brewer who had profited from the
thirst of Napoleon's troops and had later becorne brewer to Count Waldstein, he
showed early promise as a pianist and violinist and wrote his first
compositions at the age of nine.
Smetana's
father was a keen amateur musician, a violinist, and was able to teach his son.
There was, however, a period of some eight years during which Smetana had
little professional musical training, while attending schools in various
provincial towns. In 1838, however, he persuaded his father to allow hirn to
study in Prague and there took the opportunity to devote himself to music
rather than to anything else. This happy state of affairs continued only for a
year, after which he was despatched to undergo more rigorous schooling under an
uncle's supervision a! Pizen (Pilsen). Here he found scope for his abilities in
playing for dances at social gatherings and pleasure in meeting again Katerina
Kolarova, who in 1849 was to become his first wife. In 1843 he left school and
moved to Prague, determined to make a living as a musician, and supporting
himself by employment as piano teacher to the family of Count Thun.
1848
was a year of nationalist disturbance in Europe. Smetana started a music
school, but the political events of the time engaged his sympathies and he was
to remain deeply committed to ideas of Czech nationalism, although his own
first language remained German. After his marriage he was employed as a teacher
and pianist to the former Emperor Ferdinand V, the retarded heir to the
Habsburg throne. These years, however, brought various difficulties and
disappointments, with the death of three of his four children and the illness
of his wife. Finally, in 1856, he sought a solution for money troubles by
moving to Göteborg, where he opened a successful music school and became
closely involved with the musical life of the city. Five years later he
returned to Prague, while retaining some association with Sweden.
It
was after his return to Bohemia that Smetana set about the composition of music
for the theatre. In 1863 he completed The Brandenburgers in Bohemia, which he
finally conducted at the Czech Provisional Theatre three years later, in 1866,
the year of The Bartered Bride, when he was at last appointed principal
conductor of the Theatre. Two years later Dalibor was staged, to accusations of
Wagnerism, followed in 1872 by the completion of Libuše and two years later the
opera The Two Widows. Smetana had his enemies and rivals, and there was a
growing movement for his dismissal from the Provisional Theatre. In 1874 he was
forced to take leave of absence as a result of his increasing deafness, and
accompanying tintinnitus. In spite of the limitations this imposed on his
ability to compose, he completed the opera The Kiss in 1876 and The Secret two
years later. In 1881, at the opening of the new National Theatre, his opera
Libuše was staged, while he continued to work relatively slowly on his opera
The Devil's Wall, which he had started in 1879 and eventually completed in
1882. His health continued to deteriorate, with intermittent loss or memory and
of speech, and he died in May, 1884, in an asylum in Prague.
The
stormy Overture to The Brandenburgers in Bohemia introduces a medieval story of
the Brandenburg Burgrave Otto V, whose army occupied Bohemia after the defeat
and death of Otakar II. In Smetana's opera, a work of obvious topical
reference, the peasant hero Jíra accuses the German mayor Tausendmark of
corruption, a charge for which he is at first made to suffer, though later
exonerated.
Dalibor
is set in the 15th century. The protagonist, a knight, avenges the death of his
friend, the minstrel Zdenek, by killing his slayer, the Burgrave of Ploskovice.
The sister of the Burgrave seeks justice from King Vladislav, but changes her
mind and tries to help him escape. The plan fails, and both are killed. The
opera, with its rescue plot, as Milada, in disguise like Beethoven's Leonora,
attempts to save a prisoner condemned to starvation, has clear political
overtones.
The
libretto of Libuše, again by the writer Joseph Wenzig, author of Dalibor, takes
as its title the name of the princess, descendant of the first Czech to lead
his people into Bohemia, whose marriage began a new and prosperous dynasty. She
settles an argument between her two young brothers over their inheritance by
dividing it into two equal parts, but jealousy is aroused by the intervention
of one of Libuše's ladies-in-waiting. Matters are brought to a rational
conclusion when Libuše takes as her husband Premysl, the founder of a Bohemian
ruling dynasty. The opera is described as “festive” and was performed at the
opening of the National Theatre and again when the theatre was rebuilt after a
disastrous fire.
The Two Widows is a comic opera on a much
smaller scale. It deals with two widows Caroline and Agnes, and the latter's
ill-concealed love for the rich young neighbour Ladislav, who trespasses on
Caroline's land in order to meet Agnes, but is caught and imprisoned by
Caroline's dim-witted gamekeeper Mumlal. The Kiss and The Secret belong to the
same unpretentious group of later operas. The first concerns the proposed
marriage between the widower Lukas and Vendulka, who refuses, in accordance
with an old superstition, to kiss him before their wedding. Matters are
resolved only after Lukas has kissed a great many other girls. The Secret also
deals with country matters, with the long delayed marriage between Kalina and
Roza, and between Vitek, Kalina's son, and Roza's niece. The secret of the
title lay in the promised existence of a treasure that should make Kalina rich,
a treasure that turned out not to be gold, as Roza suspected, but herself.
The
Devil's Wall, described by Smetana as a comic-romantic opera, deals with the
legendary attempt by the Devil to change the course of the River Vltava to
avoid the building of a monastery. The hermit Beneš conjures with the Devil to
prevent the marriage of the rich Marshai of Bohemia, whose wealth will come to
the monastery, of which Beneš hopes to become abbot. The work, with strong
elements of dramatic parody and music that belies the composer's illness, has
some complexity of intrigue, as the Devil, Rarach, does his worst, at times
dramatically identified as the Doppelgänger of Beneš.
The
Overture to the puppet play Oldrich and Boźena was written in 1863 as an
introduction to the work of M. Kopecky, for whose Doktor Faust Smetana had
provided an Overture the previous year.
Czecho-Slovak
State Philharmonic Orchestra (Košice)
The
East Slovakian town of Košice boasts a long and distinguished musical
tradition, as part of a province that once provided Vienna with musicians. The
State Philharmonic Orchestra is of relatively recent origin and was established
in 1968 under the conductor Bystrik Rezucha. Subsequent principal conductors have
included Stanislav Macura and Ladislav Slovák, the latter succeeded in 1985 by
his pupil Richard Zimmer. The orchestra has toured widely in Eastern and
Western Europe and plays an important part in the Košice Musical Spring and the
Košice InternationalOrgan Festival.
For
Marco Polo the orchestra has made the first compact disc recordings of rare
works by Granville Bantock and Joachim Raff. Writing on the last of these, one
critic praised the orchestra for its competence comparable to that of the major
orchestras of Vienna and Prague. The orchestra has contributed several
successful volumes to the complete compact disc Johann Strauss II and for Naxos
has recorded a varied repertoire.
Robert
Stankovsky
Robert
Stankovsky was born in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, in 1964, and after
a childhood spent in the study of the piano, recorder, oboe and clarinet,
turned his attention, at the age of fourteen, to conducting, graduating in this
and in piano at the Bratislava Conservatory with the title of best graduate of
the year. In spite of his youth Stankovsky has had considerable experience as a
conductor with the major orchestras of Slovakia, including the Slovak
Philharmonic Orchestra, the Capella Istropolitana, the Bratislava Radio
Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Central Bohemian Symphony Orchestra, the
Košice State Philharmonic Orchestra and others. He has conducted in East and
West Germany, in Hungary, Russia, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain and in the
United States of America and is at the moment conductor of the Czecho-Slovak
Radio Symphony Orchestra, Bratislava, and of the Košice State Philharmonic
Orchestra. He has made recordings with the Ukrainian Radio Orchestra in Kiev
and since November, 1988, has been permanent guest conductor of the Leipzig
Grosses Rundfunk Orchestra. Stankovsky is regarded as one of the best
conductors of the younger generation in Czechoslovakia. For Marco Polo
Stankovsky has recorded symphonies by Rubinstein and Miaskovsky in addition to
orchestral works by Dvorák and Smetana.