Serenade in D minor, Op. 44                                                                       Antonín Dvorák
     Moderato, quasi marcia
     Minuetto
     Andante con moto
     Allegro molto

Mládí                                                                                                                Leos Janácek
     Allegro
     Andante sostenuto
     Vivace
     Allegro animato

Intermezzo                                                                                                       Zoltán Kodály

Sextet Op. 37                                                                                                 Ernö Dohnányí
     Allegro appassionato
     Intermezzo.  Adagio - Alla marcia
     Allegro con sentimento
     Finale.  Allegro - Vivace giocoso

Dvorák’s early years as a musician and composer were not economically easy - among the jobs he took to make ends meet was playing viola for the inmates of an insane asylum (a service also performed by Edward Elgar) - but by 1878 his fortunes had improved, with growing international recognition, the support of Johannes Brahms and the publication of some of his works.  Along with the three Slavonic Rhapsodies and first series of Slavonic Dances, the Serenade Op. 44 dates from that happy year.

The instrumentation of two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, three horns, cello, bass and optional contrabassoon is clearly modelled, albeit loosely, on that of Mozart’s Grand Partita, though Dvorák at this point had yet to revive the previously long-dormant basset horn (that had to wait until his Czech Suite of a few years later, celebrating the instrument’s particular historical affinity with Bohemia).  The inclusion of the cello, Dvorák’s favourite instrument (as evidenced by his two cello concerti, one of which remains unperformed), in what is mostly a wind ensemble, is an unabashedly Romantic quirk.  The Grand Partita also evidently inspired the form of the Serenade, though in a more concentrated package:  a march-like first movement, a “minuet” (here actually a combination of two Czech dances, a sousedská and a furiant), a slow movement with a sublime, languid melody over an insistent rhythmic pulse, and a triumphant ending.  The sprit is lyrical, good humoured and very much grounded in folk music tradition; in concept the work is akin to Brahms’ Serenade in D of 1858, with which Dvorák was no doubt familiar (and which listeners will remember the Riverdale Ensemble performing last season, in its original scoring for chamber ensemble).

Though he was only 13 years younger than Dvorák, the music of Leos Janácek (1854-1928) gives the impression of being several generations more recent.  In 1924 Janácek turned 70, and could look back on a long career as a teacher and composer, primarily of vocally oriented music (songs, choral works and latterly operas), which had been spent almost entirely in his native Moravia and outside the international spotlight.  It was only in the 1920s that he finally achieved recognition as a Czech composer worthy of comparison with Smetana and Dvorák, and as one of the 20th century’s most original and accessible opera composers.  It was also only at this stage in his career that, stimulated in part by his first visits to international chamber music festivals, he turned his hand in earnest to music for smaller ensembles.

The suite Mládí (“Youth”), for wind quintet plus bass clarinet, owes its genesis to two factors:  a request - which he fulfilled reluctantly, not feeling particularly old! - from a biographer to supply information about his life, which led to reminiscences of childhood; and hearing performances by an accomplished Parisian wind quintet, whose tonal textures he found intriguing.  Imbued with a wistful and whimsical spirit, its four movements are all more or less programmatic.  The first is a depiction of his days in elementary school in his hometown of Hukvaldy, and features a universal, decending-third “nyah-nyah” schoolyard motif.   The second recalls his subsequent time as a choirboy in the Monastery in Brno, with a plainchant-like tune interspersed with sighs and agitated episodes reflecting  his sadness and anguish at being parted from his mother (being from a large, poor family, Leos was sent to live away from home for economic reasons).  The third, a recasting of his earlier March of the Blue Boys, portrays the military cadets at the Monastery, their naïveté made somewhat eerie by the ominous presence of occupying Prussian soldiers.  The fourth is a general statement of vigorous optimism on embarking on the adventure of life.

Janácek’s late music, though rooted in the 19th century in tonal and harmonic terms, displays certain traits that give it a highly distinctive character.  Its structure tends to be based on short episodes with sudden transitions, rather than on broader traditional forms, with the frequent appearance of unexpected interruptions and interjections.  In addition, he made use of  “speech-melody”:  the derivation of melodic contours and rhythmic motifs from speech patterns, yielding passages which, while irregular and unconventional, are still completely natural to the ear.

The premiere performance of Mládí in 1924 was marred by mechanical misadventure:  a spring broke on the clarinet, rendering it unplayable, so the clarinettist mimed the entire piece.  Though the audience thoroughly enjoyed the results, Janácek felt compelled to stand up and voice a disclaimer.  We fervently hope that history will not be repeated this evening.

Unlike most of the composers whose works the Riverdale Ensemble performs, Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967) could not be called neglected; the particular work we are presenting, though, probably could be. 

Considering the lavish total of his compositions, Kodály wrote relatively little instrumental chamber music.  Most of it is for string instruments, with or without piano; the culmination of this part of his output came with the monumental Duo for violin and cello (1914) and Sonata for cello solo (1915).  The Intermezzo for string trio (not to be confused with the similarly titled movement from the Háry János Suite), though from only a decade earlier (1905), is however a lifetime away in terms of the composer’s development.  It was written immediately after Kodály graduated from the Budapest Academy of Music with degrees in music and education, and just before he embarked on his first of many tours to collect the folksongs of Hungary and elsewhere.  His mature musical language had thus not yet developed; the Intermezzo sounds a bit like Dvorák with a slight Hungarian accent. 

Like his rather better-known compatriot Béla Bartók, Ernö Dohnányí (1877-1960) was born in the then-Hungarian city of Pozsony (now Bratislava in Slovakia).  Following his early years as a child prodigy pianist, he made the unusual decision to undertake his further education at the Academy of Music in Budapest, in preference to Vienna; in this he was followed by Bartók, Kodály and others, and hence became one of the principal shapers of formal music in modern Hungary.  Several years of concert tours established his reputation as the premier Hungarian pianist and composer since Liszt.  In 1915 he settled in Budapest and became entrenched as the godfather of the musical establishment there, as director of the Academy (until his ouster for political reasons) and as conductor of the Budapest Philharmonic.  It was said that no piece of orchestral music was performed in Budapest in the 1920s and 30s without his approval.

Dohnányí’s choice to remain in Hungary during the Second World War, his coexistence (albeit uneasy) with the Fascist authorities, his decision to flee to Vienna near the end of the war, and his stint teaching in Argentina in the late 1940s, all contributed to his later life being dogged by persistent rumours - in all likelihood unjust - of pro-Nazi sympathies.  Eventually Dohnányí ended up as composer-in-residence at Florida State University; one of his tasks there, which he reportedly found completely baffling, was to write a new fight song for the university football team.  He died with his boots on, while recording in New York.

Dohnányí’s music manages to remain firmly in the late 19th century in its materials while being uniquely characteristic in style.  It has been described as “highly lyrical and vivacious music, often tinged with a rare sense of humour”, displaying “an unerring mastery of form and instrumental fluency, and a rich but utterly natural sense of harmony which enabled him to make unbridled chromatic extensions without ever losing the tonal centre.  He succeeded in blending the Brahmsian preservation of classical form with the Lisztian concept of motivic strands binding together a large-scale work” (Bálint Vázsonyi).  The Sextet Op. 37 for clarinet, horn, violin, viola, cello and piano, composed in 1935, demonstrates these qualities to the fullest.

(We apologize that limitations of computer keyboard character sets and browser compatibility make it impractical to include all of the correct accent marks on Czech and Hungarian words!)
 

Gary Armstrong Woodwinds Ltd.   Hello World Travel	Aster's Music House   h Long & McQuade Musical Instrumentse

 See here for information on opportunities to sponsor and otherwise assist the Riverdale Ensemble