Czech Philharmonic • Jakub Hrůša

William Shakespeare’s romance The Winter’s Tale is notoriously set partially in Bohemia, specifically on Bohemia’s seacoast. Shakespeare’s contemporary Ben Jonson already pointed out the minor error, but it did not bother theatregoers and readers either back then or in the 19th century, when the play provided the Czech National Revival one of its symbols. In 1864, during the grandiose celebrations of the 300th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, the actress Otýlie Malá appeared wearing the costume of Perdita from The Winter’s Tale, representing “Perdita ars bohemica”, and she recited the line “[The arts of Bohemia] shall no more roam the world, living on the bread and grace of strangers.” The composer Josef Suk (1874–1935) could not have been in attendance, but as he wrote to the musicologist Otokar Šourek in1921, he adored Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale. He apparently knew the play from the library of his father, the lead teacher at the school in Křečovice, but his interest in Shakespeare was likely also heightened by the task of preparing a piano reduction of Antonín Dvořák’s concert overture Othello, Op. 93, assigned to him by its author, Suk’s composition teacher.

The Winter’s Tale, Op. 9, is one of Suk’s early works, and like other compositions from that period, Suk revised it in later years. The original version dates from 1893–1895. Afterwards, Suk did not hold it in very high regard, especially in terms of its form. In what was his first attempt at writing programme music, he felt he was still groping to find his way between tradition and modernism, but he could also see qualities in the work that made it worthy of revisions that would give it a definitive form. Soon after was written, The Winter’s Tale was premiered at the 19th Slavonic Concert, and it was also heard several times that year at the Czecho-Slavic Ethnographic Exhibition. The works final revisions were made at the initiative of the conductor Jaroslav Vogel, who rehearsed and performed this “overture for large orchestra” with the Czech Philharmonic in 1926.

Only a few years separate Josef Suk’s Shakespearean Winter’s Tale from his music for Zeyer’s fairytale play Radúz and Mahulena (premiered at Prague’s National Theatre in 1898), but considerable artistic growth stands between them. The intellectual world of Julius Zeyer (1841–1901) provided the young composer with a powerful source of inspiration—one that, by the end of the 1890s, happily converged with Suk’s heartfelt affection for Dvořák’s daughter, Otilie. Suk wrote, “Springtime in my soul”; “springtime in music”; “melodies are just pouring out of me, and orchestration flows like the fairytale veil mentioned in the prologue.” With these words, he expressed his feelings about this stage of his life and artistic career. Of course, the play Radúz and Mahulena is more than just a story of love that is stronger than a curse and hatred; it also offers plenty of psychological nuance, emotion, and references to folklore. Suk’s music was a perfect match for Zeyer’s text, just as it was a match for Jan Preisler’s imagery brought to life in the 1970 cinematic version of Radúz and Mahulena—but now we are getting ahead of ourselves. Of the motifs that Suk created for Radúz and Mahulena and that also appear in his later works, the best known is the death motif consisting of two augmented fourths, one ascending and one descending.

It was soon apparent that the incidental music was viable independently and deserved to be arranged into a suite. Suk created the concert version of A Fairy Tale, Op. 16, in 1899–1900, and Oskar Nedbal conducted the Czech Philharmonic in the premiere a year later. The suite has four movements that use the wealth of melodic and harmonic material from the incidental music to maximum effect. The first movement (About the Faithful Love of Radúz and Mahulena and Their Sorrows) corresponds to Zeyer’s Prologue and features a warmly lyrical violin solo and the motif of mourning discussed above. A polka (The Game of Swans and Peacocks) is followed by the third movement, the moving and dignified Funeral Music tied to the dramatic situation—the death of the king, Radúz’s father. In the final movement, Runa’s Curse and How It Was Broken by Love, the conflict suggested by the title places the passionate motif of Queen Runa in opposition to a violin solo symbolising liberating love. Radúz and Mahulena was of major importance for Suk’s maturing as a composer and for the shaping of his artistic individuality.

Sibelius began exhibiting musical talent as a child. After having briefly studied law at the university in Helsinki, he devoted himself fully to music, first at the conservatoire in Helsinki, then in Berlin and Vienna. He had played the violin from his youth and desired to become a violin virtuoso, but he was held back by nerves and a lack of mental resilience. For that reason, he failed at his audition for the Vienna Philharmonic, but he did not give up on the violin. Today, his only concerto, the three-movement Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47 (1903–1904), is one of the most popular works of its genre. Viktor Nováček played the extremely difficult violin part at the premiere in Helsinki in 1904, but his performance was said to have been less than successful. The concerto then underwent revisions, resulting in a work that was shorter and slightly easier technically. Karel Halíř was the soloist for the premiere of that version in 1905 with the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of Richard Strauss. From the beginning, the middle movement (Adagio di molto) with its ravishing lyricism and “colour of Nordic landscapes” enjoyed the greatest popularity with audiences. The two outer movements (Allegro moderato; Allegro, ma non tanto) are in sonata form, and the concerto concludes with an exciting finale that the composer characterised as a “danse macabre”.

The symphonic poem The Oceanides, Op. 73, is sometimes called one of the most effective musical evocations of the sea, and just as the sea is always changing, Sibelius kept changing the title of his composition: originally Aallottaret (Nymphs of the Waves), then Rondeau der Wellen, Rondo of the Waves, Les Océanides etc. The composition was commissioned by the founders of the Norfolk Music Festival in Connecticut, where Sibelius conducted the work’s final version in 1914. That version was the product of a rather complex process of refinement of the composer’s ideas, including changes to the work’s key signature and form. From a three-movement suite in E flat major, the composer produced a one-movement “Yale” version in D flat major, then finally, probably under the influence of his personal invitation to the festival, he went on to transpose the work into D major, revising the orchestration, and making other changes. The symphonic poem has two main themes (the playing of the nymphs – the majesty of the ocean) that are developed, depicting calm and stormy seas. Already at its premiere, comparisons were made between The Oceanides and Debussy’s La mer (1905), but unlike the Impressionist Debussy, Sibelius remained firmly grounded in late Romanticism.