{ program notes is reduced to just strings and the darker winds— clarinets, bassoons, and horns— giving it a moody coloration. The piano’ s long, melancholy melodies introduce a Romantic world Mozart never quite entered. Near the conclusion comes a tender duet for the solo clarinet and the piano.
The pianist launches the finale with a high-spirited rondo theme that is easy to recognize on its many returns. The composer includes a perky dialogue between woodwinds and soloist near the end as well as a quiet passage for soloist with oboe that sets off the boisterous finish all the better.
Instrumentation: One flute, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings.
Symphony No. 8 in G Major
Antonín Dvořák
Born in Nelahozeves, Bohemia( now Czech Republic), September 8, 1841; died in Prague, May 1, 1904
Even after he had become an internationally famous composer, Antonín Dvořák remained close to his Bohemian roots,“ a simple Czech musician” in his own words. The son of a small-town innkeeper and butcher and originally destined for a butcher’ s career himself, he remained largely unaffected by his fame. When his compositions had earned him some financial security, he used his money not for a grand town house in Prague, but to purchase a small farm in rural Vysoká. Here he soaked up the beauties and rhythms of the Czech countryside during the summer months, raised pigeons, and composed much of his mature music, including the Eighth Symphony. His mentor Johannes Brahms repeatedly urged him to move to Vienna, the capital of European music as well as of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but Dvořák always refused.
Composed between August and November 1889 and premiered on February 2, 1890 under the composer’ s baton in Prague, the Eighth Symphony
D v o ř á k
Cellos, reinforced by clarinets, bassoons, and horns, sing a gently melancholy theme in the minor.
reflects the world of Vysoká and of Czech folk song and dance. After his rather Germanic Seventh, Dvořák wrote that he wanted to create something“ different from the other symphonies, with individual thoughts worked out in a new way.” In the first, second, and fourth movements of the Eighth, he used freer forms and a flexible mixing of major and minor modes to produce marvelous shadows and nuances in a fundamentally happy work. The Eighth is also the most melodious of his symphonies and wonderfully orchestrated, with the woodwind and string sections used throughout as contrasting color families.
The first movement begins with a short introduction. Cellos, reinforced by clarinets, bassoons, and horns, sing a gently melancholy theme in the minor. Then a piping birdsong flute idea opens the main Allegro section in G Major, and the orchestra gathers its forces in an exciting crescendo. Divided violas and cellos introduce a stately repeated-note theme, and the orchestra bursts into vivacious life. This unconventional yet highly effective opening could be a portrait of daybreak in the Czech countryside, with the flute-bird greeting the first rays of the sun and then daylight flooding the landscape as man and beast awaken to bustling activity. A second, more lyrical group of themes opens with a rocking melody in the violins, followed by an upward-leaping tune for woodwinds.
The development section, launched by the flute birdcall, is full of rustic atmosphere and wit, rather than heavy-breathing dramatics. At its close, trumpets blaze forth the opening cello theme, giving it an altogether new character. The muchcompressed recapitulation flows into an exuberant closing coda.
An atmospheric mood piece, the Adagio second movement weaves between minor and Major, lightheartedness and a sense of sadness, even tragedy. It opens in C minor with a dark, yearning melody in the strings, punctuated by more woodwind birdcalls. Then the picture brightens to C Major, and solo oboe and flute sing a soaring, idyllic tune above delicate down-rushing strings; this section gradually grows weightier and more passionate. After a reprise of the opening music, horns introduce a tragic mood to funeral march-like blows on the timpani. An airy coda gathers together all the contrasting emotional colors of this subtle movement.
A delicately soaring waltz in G minor forms the third movement, surrounding a bucolic trio section in G Major led by the woodwinds. So fertile are his powers of melodic invention that Dvořák even throws in a brandnew folk dance in duple meter to wrap up the movement.
A trumpet fanfare opens the finale, which is, in Michael Steinberg’ s words, a series of“ footloose variations” on a warm, folksy theme introduced by the cellos. The most striking variations come in an exotic, earthy section in C minor, reminiscent of some of Dvořák’ s popular Slavonic Dances. Toward the end, the tempo keeps accelerating as the whole orchestra— but the whooping horns most of all— cut loose in an uninhibited dance of joy.
Instrumentation: Two flutes including piccolo, two oboes including English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani and strings.
Notes by Janet E. Bedell, Copyright © 2016
September – November 2016 | Overture 39