28-11-2011: Bedřich Smetana

[french frank]

Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884)

1/5. Donald Macleod discusses a highly personal chamber work and Smetana's move to Gothenburg.
2/5. Smetana's romantic life.
3/5. Smetana tries to create an operatic style that was recognisably Czech
4/5. Smetana's Ma Vlast and the rebirth of a Czech culture.
5/5. Smetana's final years, when he composed Ma Vlast.

[Chris Newman]

Like many of us here I love Má Vlast. Vltava was the work that got me into music over 50 years ago. Although it is often regarded as the birth-piece of Czech music, what never ceases to amaze me about Má Vlast is that really it is the work of a thieving magpie. Everything seems to flow as naturally as the river itself yet time and again you hear bits nicked from other sources and miraculously blended into something of Smetana's own. As far as I know the famous Vyšehrad motif that begins on the harps, crowns the river's journey at Prague in Vltava and finishes the the cycle at the end of Blaník is Smetana's own.

The famous big tune in Vltava (rather like the Northumbrian/Hungarian Keel Row) crops up all over Europe as a folk song, though it has been variously attributed to a northern Italian song as well as Czech and Swedish folksongs. As Smetana worked in Gothenburg I am sure he spotted the resemblanceto the Moravian songs of his childhood. Strange that Israel chose to use it as their national anthem.

Šárka is as terrifying as any of Antonín Dvořák's Erben-inspired Symphonic poems. In its course you can hear bits of the 1812 Overture and when Šárka falsely woos Ctirad to his death the passionate long musical phrase before the horn call astonishingly begins as Wagner and ends as Verdi. But these robberies (I better leave some work to Donald Macleod) are all blended (laundered) into a sound world that becomes Czech, not as definitively as Dvořák and Janáček but recognisably so.

[barber olly]

Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884)

1/5. Donald Macleod discusses a highly personal chamber work and Smetana's move to Gothenburg.
2/5. Smetana's romantic life.
3/5. Smetana tries to create an operatic style that was recognisably Czech
4/5. Smetana's Ma Vlast and the rebirth of a Czech culture.
5/5. Smetana's final years, when he composed Ma Vlast.

So we'll get Vltava again next week - last week on EC, this week on Breakfast!!!

[Chris Newman]

So we'll get Vltava again next week - last week on EC, this week on Breakfast!!!

But it's not Smetana's fault. Strange name, Smetana: Mr Cream.

[barber olly]

1.But it's not Smetana's fault. 2 Strange name, Smetana: Mr Cream.

1. No it's Dodgy Roger's!
2. Quite good in goulash!