Czech Philharmonic • Cologne

“Whatever we have in Czech history that is truly great has grown from the bottom up!” This sentence by the famous Czech author Jan Neruda tells us a great deal about the history of the Czech nation and its great figures. It certainly applies unreservedly to Antonín Dvořák, whose growing artistry took him from a little village to the world’s greatest metropolises.

When Neruda wrote these words in 1884, he was 50 years old. And what was Antonín Dvořák doing in 1891 at age 50? He was a famous, sought-after composer, an artist whose popularity had long since crossed the borders of Austria-Hungary and spread all over Europe. It was in the year of his 50th birthday that he was offered the directorship of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. He considered the matter very carefully, consulting with many of the people who were close to him. For example, he wrote to his friend Alois Göbl in June 1891: “I’m supposed to go to America for two years! […] Should I accept the offer? Or not? Send me word.” Dvořák had never been very fond of celebrations, so it is no surprise that in early September he refused to take part in celebrations in Prague for his 50th birthday because he was spending time with his family at his beloved summer home in Vysoká, where he went to rest and to compose. Four days after his birthday (12 September 1891), he finished orchestrating Carnival Overture, Op. 92, the second work in a cycle of three concert overtures that are programmatic in character. We do not have a concrete programme from the composer, but he clearly realised something here that no one would have expected from him in the realm of symphonic music. Two years earlier, he had already gone down this path in chamber music with his Poetic Tone Pictures, Op. 85, thirteen pieces for solo piano, about which he jokingly commented: “I’m not just an absolute musician, but also a poet.” Dvořák had originally conceived his triptych of concert overtures depicting three aspects of human life as a single whole with the title “Nature, Life, and Love”. All three overtures are also carefully motivically interconnected. Ultimately, however, the composer told his publisher Simrock that his overtures “each can also be played separately”, and he gave them the opus numbers and titles In Nature’s Realm, Op. 91, Carnival Overture, Op. 92, and Othello, Op. 93. The first performance of all three overtures took place on 28 April 1892 at the Rudolfinum in Prague at the composer’s farewell concert before his departure for America, with Dvořák himself conducting the orchestra of the National Theatre. Dvořák also conducted their second performance, this time across the ocean on 21 October 1892 at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

The English composer Edward Elgar grew up in the family of a church organist who owned a shop that sold sheet music and instruments. Little Edward began playing the piano at school, and he learned to play the organ by watching his father. He also borrowed a variety of instruments from the family shop and taught himself to play them without receiving any kind of instruction, so he soon mastered not only piano and organ, but also violin, viola, cello, and bassoon. He also began composing in a similar manner. At age 16 he became a free-lance musician, so he got experience mainly as an instrumentalist, church organist, and conductor. He mostly composed choral music, but he did not achieve true renown as a composer until he reached the age of 42, when he wrote his Enigma Variations, Op. 36. The great conductor Hans Richter held the work in high esteem and prepared and led its premiere. The idea of creating a set of variations with a secret, “encoded” theme is indicative of Elgar’s unusual imaginativeness, and as a self-taught composer, he was not under any restraints. The work is a covert tribute to the composer’s wife Alice and to the friends who supported Elgar during the years of uncertainty as he got his start as a composer.

Another of Elgar’s most important works is the Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85. Just choosing the cello as a solo instrument represents a great challenge for composers. Antonín Dvořák may have put it most succinctly, once warning his composition pupils that unlike the piano or violin, which are capable of carrying themselves in front of an orchestra as ideal solo instruments, the cello does not possess comparable tonal qualities: “it whines up high and mumbles down low”. It is possible that after Elgar’s Violin Concerto (1907–1910), he was taking on a challenge as Dvořák had done—dealing with a difficult compositional task. The solutions the composer selected definitely hint at this. Elgar chose an unusual four-movement layout that differs from most other concertos and is more typical of chamber music, and Elgar’s concerto has a great deal in common with the chamber music genre. The composer deals with the cello’s sonic limitations by using a very delicate instrumental touch, and the music itself is in fact very personal, even intimate in character. Elgar’s musical language achieves perfection in its musical expression of pain and sorrow. The melancholy phrases that descend ever more deeply into despair and gloom are the key to the interpreter’s grasp of the entire work. The concerto dates from a time of great resignation immediately after the First World War. The composer himself was battling illness, but above all he was affected by the decline of his beloved wife’s health. She managed to attend the concerto’s premiere, but she died the following year. Although the premiere on 27 October 1919 featured the superb cellist Felix Salmond, the London Symphony Orchestra, and Elgar conducting, the performance did not turn out well because of a lack of sufficient rehearsal time. The failed premiere proved to be too much for the concerto. Despite the efforts of many outstanding cellists, it was not until 1965 that the work gained wide recognition thanks to the legendary recording made by Jacqueline du Pré, who was 20 years old at the time.

“My little room is now furnished, pictures hanging: Sebastian Bach above the piano, next to him Beethoven, and then several Raphaels – the decoration of the walls is quite varied. I also have a dressing table, with a bottle of eau de cologne, which all my aunts and cousins so admire. And then a tiny basket containing my three travel journals,” thus wrote Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809–1847) in 1832 after returning to Berlin from a two-year journey to England, Scotland and Italy. Having Bach and Beethoven portraits in his apartment attests to the young composer’s musical loves and idols, while reproductions of Raphael’s paintings served to recollect his impressions of Italy. Mendelssohn’s keen interest in the history of art was kindled within the intellectual milieu in which he grew up. He was born in Hamburg, yet when he was three his family moved to Berlin in fear of Napoleon Bonaparte’s army. His grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn, was a renowned philosopher, a leading cultural figure who played a considerable role in the emancipation of Jews in German society. Felix’s father, the banker and art lover Abraham Mendelssohn renounced Judaism and converted to Protestantism, and also formally adopted another surname, Bartholdy. A musician herself, Felix’s mother Lea eagerly supported and nurtured her children’s talent. Felix grew up in a family romantically enchanted by Nature, poetry and music. He began composing at the time when music was perceived as capable of telling stories, conveying ideas and rendering impressions. Fully embracing this approach, his extensive oeuvre includes 12 early string symphonies, as well as five mature symphonies for full orchestra, combining the historical legacy with the Romantic sentiment of his time. Although not programme works, they clearly reflect Mendelssohn’s personal experience.

The most noteworthy of the mature symphonies are the third, the “Scottish”, and the fourth, the “Italian”, both inspired by the composer’s youthful travels. Mendelssohn began conceiving Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90, the “Italian”, during his almost two-year sojourn in Italy, starting in May 1830. Carrying with him the travel diaries of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who travelled through the country between 1786 and 1788, he visited Rome, Naples, Pompeii, Genoa, Milan, Venice, Florence and other places. In a letter to his sister Fanny, dated 22 February 1831, Mendelssohn wrote that he had been composing intensively, completing the cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht (The First Walpurgis Night), based on Goethe’s eponymous poem, adding that: “The Italian symphony is making great progress. It will be the most joyous piece I have ever done, the final movement in particular. I have not found anything for the adagio yet, and I think that I will save that for Naples.” He also pointed out: “Yet I still cannot get a grip on the Scottish symphony. Should during this time a good idea occur, I will snatch it, note it down presently and finish it.” Mendelssohn gave a secondary name to both symphonies. Completed in 1833, the Italian was performed on 13 May that year in London by the London Philharmonic Society, with the composer conducting. Not entirely satisfied with the work, Mendelssohn made revisions, yet he deemed none of them definitive, and so the piece exists in several versions. Chronologically, the Italian is actually his third symphony, as the composer only finished the Scottish in 1842, when it also received its premiere. The Italian was first published, posthumously, in 1851, thus having a higher number.

The first movement, in sonata form, reveals Mendelssohn as an innovator of the conventional conception. As against the bold main theme, the subsidiary theme is rather a mere episode, yet the development includes a third, contrapuntal, theme, attesting to the composer’s admiration of the Baroque masters. Created in response to the death of Mendelssohn’s teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758–1832), as well as his beloved J. W. Goethe (1749–1832), the second movement too can be considered to be in sonata form, albeit without a development. The third movement is a minuet, while the finale incorporates the vivacious Saltarello, an Italian folk dance in 6/8 time.