Aside from the “New World” Symphony, the Cello Concerto is the most epic work from Dvořák’s American period. It is also his American finale: Dvořák left New York after writing it and went back home, having produced—among several masterpieces—what remains the most popular “American” symphony, and having made an argument for African American spirituals as the “folk songs of America,” a revolutionary statement at the time. Though the Cello Concerto contains no explicitly American program, it was written in New York in 1894–1895 and influenced by another New World European: Irish-born Victor Herbert, whose Cello Concerto No. 2 moved Dvořák to try a cello concerto of his own.
Cellist Alwin Schroeder of the Boston Symphony Orchestra assisted Dvořák with the technical aspects of writing a cello concerto; he had further help back in Prague from cellist Hanuš Wihan, who had been pressing Dvořák for a concerto for some time. Indeed, Wihan became too helpful, first editing the cello part, then adding music of his own, until Dvořák finally had to intervene and insist to his publisher that they print the concerto “as I have written it.”
The genesis of the concerto was direct, the composition swift. Dvořák heard Herbert’s concerto at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic and was so moved that he rushed backstage and embraced the composer, after which he wrote his own Cello Concerto in only three months. It is not surprising that he would be so taken with Herbert’s piece. Like Dvořák, Herbert was a European composer with a seemingly inexhaustible melodic gift who loved American culture. His famous operettas were still before him, but he had already composed the orchestral work The Vision of Columbus (later the finale of the Columbus Suite) the year before, his counterpart to Dvořák’s cantata, The American Flag.
Though Dvořák’s work cuts much deeper, these New World concertos have striking similarities. Both begin with somber motifs that seem to signify their European origins, yet soon shed their weight. The traditional heaviness of the cello often disappears, especially in the slow movements, where the instrument takes on a feathery lightness that makes it sound like a wind instrument, allowing it to soar into the open air.
Dvořák’s Cello Concerto is considered by many to be the greatest in the cello literature. Opinion of the work has been high ever since none other than Brahms (always a Dvořák advocate) exclaimed upon first encountering it, “Why on earth didn’t I know that a person could write a violoncello concerto like this? If I had only known, I would have written one long ago.”
The distinct identity of the concerto, however, is controversial. Some music scholars stubbornly resist the notion that Dvořák’s “American” works—the music he wrote while sojourning in New York and Spillville, Iowa—are anything of the sort. Even the “New World” Symphony and the “American” Quartet and Quintet, we are told, are really Bohemian works with little or no distinctively American aspects, whether African American, American Indian, or what Dvořák called “the sadness of prairies”—never mind that Dvořák said otherwise numerous times, or that the spiritual for English horn in the symphony was so close to the shape and spirit of a real spiritual that it actually became one (“Goin’ Home”).
The location and other circumstances under which any work of art is composed often have a psychological or associational bearing on its content, and Dvořák was deeply invested in mining American ambiance and culture during his two-year stay. Part of what is so attractive about the concerto—aside from the skill with which it deals with the difficulties of writing for solo cello against full orchestra—is its exuberant openness and epic expansiveness, a quality that does indeed strike some listeners as American despite the lack of specifically American material.
Related to this American quality is a certain freedom of form that makes the concerto unpredictable and surprising, even though in its broad outlines it follows the standard three-movement concerto format. One example is the somber first subject in the opening Allegro, which makes a languid reappearance near the end of the Finale; another is the lyrical second subject—one of the most beautiful horn melodies in the repertoire—that later erupts for full orchestra in a manner that gives it a whole new personality.
The slow movement has a remarkable delicacy but carries a burden of sadness. The middle section was written as a musical love letter to Dvořák’s sister-in-law, Josefina Kaunitzova—the secret love of his life—who sent him a letter describing her rapidly disintegrating health just before he began the movement. As a tribute to her, he quoted one of her favorite melodies, “Kéž duch můj sám” (“Leave me alone”), the first of his Four Songs, Op. 82.
He also added a melancholy slow section near the end of the high-spirited Finale. As with his “New World” Symphony, Dvořák delivers an ending much bolder and more original than what we expect. It was composed in 1895 when, after returning to Prague, he heard of Josefina’s death. He describes it himself in his peculiar note to the publisher demanding that his overly helpful cellist friend not be allowed to tamper with the score: “The finale closes gradually, diminuendo—like a breath—with reminiscences of the first and second movements; the solo dies away to a pianissimo, then there is a crescendo, and the last measures are taken up by orchestra, ending stormily. That was my idea and from it I cannot recede.”
Bedřich Smetana was the first composer to put Czech music on the map of symphonic culture. Like Dvořák, he wrote original melodies in the shape and spirit of Bohemian folk music (at least for the most part) rather than quoting actual tunes. The furiants, polkas, and hymns in his scores are mainly his own, though they have a vernacular shape and feel.
Má vlast (My Country), Smetana’s nationalist epic, is his most renowned work outside Czech-speaking countries. Describing the piece as a symbol of Czech independence, conductor Semyon Bychkov says it is “like a national anthem or the holy Bible.” Indeed, its soaring melodies and hymn-like cadences give it an anthem-like quality, though it also has dark and menacing moments, especially in Šárka, the third piece.
Má vlast inspires such patriotic fervor that it was banned by the occupying Nazis in 1939 after the Czech Philharmonic presented the work as a protest piece. Smetana called it “musical pictures of Czech glories and defeats.” The six tone poems were originally meant to be separate pieces, but they are frequently performed as a single unit or as excerpts. Smetana began them as he was losing his hearing (like Beethoven, he was unable to hear his final works); they premiered separately between 1875 and 1880, and the entire work was presented in 1882 in Prague. The most frequently excerpted piece is the second, Vltava (The Moldau), so much so that we often overlook the splendors of the other five.
This evening’s performance presents three of the work’s six sections that together demonstrate the remarkable range of melodies, colors, and moods of the larger work. Sensuous harp arpeggios depicting the castle of Vyšehrad, the seat of the aeriest Czech kings, establish a magical atmosphere in the opening, playing a melody that is taken up by winds, brass, and finally strings, building to a grandiose climax for the full orchestra followed by a descent that evokes the collapse of the castle. The opening theme returns in an extended statement that leads to several climaxes before the piece dies serenely away in a depiction of the river Vltava.
The most celebrated section by far is Vltava, a painterly vision of the river’s journey from distant forest to Prague and beyond. This movement has been frequently cribbed in popular culture, most notably in Terrence Malick’s magisterial film The Tree of Life. It opens with flutes weaving and swirling, leading to the famous melody. When the river flows past the Vyšehrad, we hear the theme from the opening tone poem again, giving the work a subtle unity. In Smetana’s words: “The composition describes the course of the Vltava, starting from the two small springs, the Studená and Teplá Vltava, to the unification of both streams into a single current, the course of the Vltava through woods and meadows, through landscapes where a farmer’s wedding is celebrated, the round dance of the mermaids in the night’s moonshine: On the nearby rocks loom proud castles, palaces, and ruins aloft. The Vltava swirls into the St. John’s Rapids, then it widens and flows toward Prague, past the Vyšehrad, and then majestically vanishes into the distance, ending at the Elbe.”
In a dramatic contrast to the first two tone poems, Šárka depicts the female warrior of the same name in the Czech legend The Maidens’ War, the violent story of a war between men and women. This piece is known for its brutality, but it also has moments of melting lyricism. In Smetana’s commentary, “Šárka ties herself to a tree as bait and waits to be saved by the princely knight Ctirad, deceiving him into believing that she is an unwilling captive of the rebelling women. Once released by Ctirad, who has fallen in love with her, Šárka serves him and his comrades with drugged mead, and once they have fallen asleep, she sounds a hunting horn: an agreed signal to the other women. The story ends with the warrior maidens murdering the sleeping men.” The first theme, full of jagged repetitions, moves toward expressive solos for clarinet and cello followed by a seductively songlike theme and a jaunty tune that chugs along amiably and dies away. Following the hunting horn signal, the clarinet sings a haunting transitional idea leading to a coda that evokes the revenge of the maidens, with brass, timpani, and percussion playing with mounting ferocity.
—Jack Sullivan
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