Czech Philharmonic • Helsinki

Maurice Ravel did not leave behind a large musical legacy. Some biographers claim this was because of the composer’s other activities—he was also working as a concert pianist, a conductor, and a teacher. Others say it was his meticulousness and the exacting standards he set for himself. He wrote a number of individual compositions and cycles of pieces for his own instrument, the piano, including music for solo piano, for piano four-hands, and for two pianos. He also wrote two piano concertos, both during his late creative period, composing them simultaneously between 1929 and 1931. The Piano Concerto in D major for the left hand was written on commission for the one-handed pianist Paul Wittgenstein (1887–1961), who had also asked other composers of his day to write works for his repertoire.

In his Piano Concerto in G major, Ravel employed a variety of stylistic resources ranging from Spanish folk elements to the jazz influences of his day. He conceived the orchestral accompaniment in an original manner, giving various instruments room to play solo passages. The two outer movements contrast effectively with the melancholy central Adagio. The first movement in sonata form surprisingly repeats material from the development section after the recapitulation and cadenza. The slow movement opens with a long piano solo, with wind instruments taking up the theme one after another. The theme itself has been compared to that of the slow movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet. The winds also play a major role in the orchestration of the rondo finale.

Ravel expected that, as with other works he had written, he would himself be the concerto’s first performer: “It was an interesting experience to work on both concertos at the same time. The one I will be playing myself is a concerto in the true sense of the word. What I mean is that it is written in the spirit of Mozart and Saint-Saëns. In my opinion, the music of a solo concerto has to be light and brilliant, and it should not strive for depth or for dramatic effects”, he wrote. However, problems with Ravel’s health prevented him from playing the piano part. The concerto was premiered on 14 January 1932 with Marguerite Long as the soloist and with Ravel leading the orchestra. The two artists then embarked on a four-month tour, during which they also played the new concerto on 18 February 1932 at a philharmonic concert of the New German Theatre in Prague: “A delicately crafted, polished composition full of spirit, taste, and precision, and a work of art clear as crystal, elegant, and lively”, wrote a Prague critic. “The piano part allows for both mechanistic playing and Lisztian virtuosity, though musicality is required above all in the difficult harmonic passages.” The audience even insisted that the final movement be repeated.

By the time that Smetana was in Sweden in the 1850s, he had begun to take interest in a recent musical discovery known as the symphonic poem, invented by Smetana’s mentor, the composer Franz Liszt. The symphonic poem was intended as an emphatic response to all the criticism aimed at music as an artform: according to many aestheticians, the great weakness of music was its abstractness. For this reason, composers began writing works with a concrete extramusical programme such as, for example, a story, event, or description of nature. While working in Sweden from 1856 to 1861, Smetana wrote three symphonic poems: Richard III, Hakon Jarl, and Wallenstein’s Camp. Then in he wrote respectfully to Liszt: “Consider me to be the most fervent supporter of our artistic movement, who stands for its holy truth by word and deed.”

It was not until he was back in Bohemia over a decade later that her returned to thinking about more symphonic poems. He created the extraordinary musical cycle Má vlast (My Country), a unique concept in all of music history worldwide, from 1874 to 1879. By that time, he was totally deaf. He used music to portray the myths and history of Bohemia, the country where he lived, and also his vision of the “resurrection of the Czech nation”, which was then one of the nations of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. For this very reason, Smetana’s Má vlast enjoys a unique standing in the Czech musical tradition.
The creation of any more symphonic poems by Smetana is not mentioned until 1872. In November, the music journal Hudební listy reported that Bedřich Smetana “having fully completed his great patriotic opera Libuše (…) is now moving on to larger-scale orchestral compositions titled Vyšehrad and The Moldau.” By all accounts, Smetana did not plan the whole cycle in advance; instead, it took shape over several years. In 1873, the journal Dalibor published a somewhat fanciful article, claiming that Smetana was composing “a whole cycle of symphonic poems with the overall title The Homeland and with individual sections titled Říp – Vyšehrad – The Moldau – Lipany – White Mountain etc.”, but the story was not all that far from the truth when it claimed that the composer was creating a work “based on our country’s most important moments of glory and misfortune.”

As “programme music”, Má vlast has meaning that goes beyond the world of notes, chords, or melodic lines; it involves people, things, places, and stories of the past and present. Smetana succeeded at capturing what one might call the “Czech soul” in a remarkably comprehensive way, and in Má vlast he created an amazingly timeless composition. All the political slogans of the latter half of the 19th century, when the work was written, have since inevitably become outdated (as do all political slogans ultimately), but Smetana’s music still finds a way to reach, awaken, and inspire listeners.

Smetana’s Má vlast is associated with the history of the Czech Philharmonic like few other works. It is part of a great performance tradition that dates back to 1901, when the orchestra first performed the whole cycle of symphonic poems. Since then, the Czech Philharmonic has played the work over 700 times! No other orchestra in the world has played Má vlast so often. It has given performances on workdays, weekends, and holidays, and there have even been a number of commemorative performances when Smetana’s music had a very special resonance.

1924 saw the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Smetana’s birth, and for the occasion Václav Talich prepared a performance of Má vlast with the combined orchestras of the Czech Philharmonic and the Prague Conservatoire. Má vlast was also the first work recorded by the Czech Philharmonic with Talich on the His Master’s Voice label. Smetana’s cycle became symbolically important during the Nazi occupation and the Second World War. An incredible recording was made of Talich’s Má vlast performance in June 1939, and hearing it still sends a chill up one’s spine. They play as if their lives depended on it, and at the end, the audience sang the Czech national anthem Kde domov můj (Where My Home Is). At such times, music ceases to be a kind of cultural experience that we come to enjoy, but instead sears its way into our innermost being.

For Czech listeners, in difficult times Má vlast sounds urgent like a call to arms, but there are also moments of liberation when Smetana’s special music affirms that “the governance of your own affairs will return to you, O ye Czech people”. That is how it was in June 1945, when the Czech Philharmonic played Smetana’s cycle on Old Town Square to express thanks for the end of the war. That is how it was in May 1968, when Karel Ančerl and the orchestra opened the Prague Spring Music Festival in an atmosphere of great societal revival and liberalisation after 20 years of totalitarianism. And that was again the case in the spring of 1990, shortly after the communist regime had definitively fallen. After 42 long years of exile, the conductor Rafael Kubelík returned home. “I have fervently awaited this moment, and I believed that it would come one day. I am grateful to God, to the whole nation, to my friends, and to all of you.” Those were Kubelík’s first words upon returning to his homeland on 8 April 1990. “What Václav Havel has been able to achieve recently is not a miracle, but rather proof that there are no miracles and that in mankind there is strength that can truly move mountains.”

For nearly the entire 20th century, Smetana’s cycle was something like the exclusive property of the Czech Philharmonic and other Czech orchestras. Today those orchestras face competition over which one can only rejoice. Má vlast is a valued item in the repertoire of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, and the orchestras in Munich, Bamberg, Cologne, Hamburg, Madrid, Amsterdam, and Cleveland. It was heard recently at the Prague Spring Festival and at the 2022 Salzburg Festival played by Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra consisting of young musicians from the Middle East. Má vlast has become an international work.