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2018-19 CONCERT SEASON
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Artwork by Jack Malloch
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INTERNATIONAL DANCES
SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 2019 at 7:00pm BROADMOOR COMMUNITY CHURCH 315 Lake Ave, Colorado Springs, CO 80906 SUNDAY, JANUARY 20, 2019 at 2:30pm FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH 16 E Platte Ave, Colorado Springs, CO 80903 Pre-concert talk begins 45 minutes prior to the performance with Ofer Ben-Amots, Chair, Music Department, Colorado College, Composer Jacob Klock violin Kliment Krylovskiy clarinet Zoltan Kodaly Dances of Marosszek Ofer Ben-Amots The Klezmer Concerto Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Valse-Scherzo, op. 34 Roger Smalley Footwork (Birthday Tango) Antonin Dvorak American Suite |
PROGRAM NOTES BY MARK ARNEST
Concert overview:
Very few of you will have heard this music before – even the oft-recorded Tchaikovsky, the most familiar work here, is rarely performed live. But after this program, you may well find yourself humming something you heard here. All these works are appealing and approachable – so lucid that you’ll grasp them the first time you hear them, but so lovely that you’ll want to hear them again. And all of them embody the spirit of the dance, whether it’s Tchaikovsky’s tipsy waltz, Ben-Amots’s sultry wedding dance, or Smalley’s witty but sensuous tango.
The Kodály and Ben-Amots works are based on Eastern European folk music (though all the themes in Ben-Amots’s concerto are original). For Americans, the term “folk music” often conjures ideas of simple, blowin’-in-the-wind sorts of tunes; but Eastern European folk music is famous – or notorious, if you’re playing it – for its rhythmic complexity. The melodic style is often highly ornamented, and both composers go to great lengths to recreate that style here.
Overview: Zoltán Kodály
Born December 16, 1882, Kecskemét, Hungary; died: March 6, 1967, Hegyvidék, Budapest, Hungary
Work Composed: 1927, 1929
If I were to name the composer whose works are the most perfect embodiment of the Hungarian spirit, I would answer, Kodály. His work proves his faith in the Hungarian spirit. The obvious explanation is that all Kodály’s composing activity is rooted only in Hungarian soil, but the deep inner reason is his unshakable faith and trust in the constructive power and future of his people. – Béla Bartók
Zoltán Kodály’s music is not widely performed, yet the composer’s name is securely enshrined in music history for two reasons besides the inherent quality of his work: First, he created the Kodály method of music education, which has spread worldwide; and second, there’s his groundbreaking work, with Béla Bartók, in collecting Balkan folk songs.
Kodály was the instigator here, the first of the two to go into the countryside searching for authentic folk music; Bartók, though a year older, went on his first expedition a year or two later. Carrying an Edison cylinder recorder, they traveled from village to village; at each one, they would get the village’s oldest musicians to sing and play for them, record them on primitive wax cylinders, and transcribe them when they returned to Budapest. From the time of Kodály’s first expedition in 1905 to his last in 1950, the two of them collected and transcribed some 15,000 songs from Eastern Europe and Anatolia. They are the foundation of both composers’ work, even when they are not explicitly used.
While Bartók’s interest was the entire region’s folk music, Kodály’s interest was more focused on Hungary and Hungarian enclaves such as Transylvania in modern Romania. Dances of Marosszek, based on folk songs from a section of Transylvania Kodály had visited while growing up, was composed for piano from 1923 to 1927, and arranged for orchestra in 1929. It’s in a rondo form, with the slow, poignant main theme recurring around three contrasting fast interludes, and ending with a vertiginous coda. Though you’ll hear the opening theme a lot, you’ll never hear it twice exactly the same way, as Kodály varies both the music and its orchestral presentation.
The pastoral second interlude is notable for the way in which Kodály faithfully recreates the ornament-encrusted folk style in the solo instruments.
Overview: Ofer Ben-Amots
Born October 20, 1955, Haifa, Israel
Work Composed: 2006-2008
The solo part in this concerto by internationally renowned but locally residing Ben-Amots takes to a new level a fundamental trait of his music – his mastery of idiomatic writing, meaning that the music is always uniquely fitted to the instrument that plays it. The composer has written the following program notes:
The source of inspiration to this concerto is the unique musical language of star clarinetist and virtuoso klezmer David Krakauer. Over the years I have collaborated with David on several performances and recording projects. This is, however, the first time that I wrote a composition entirely dedicated to him and with the intention to prominently feature his distinct playing style. In preparing the composition, I visited David in New York City where we went over some early sketches. The few hours we spent together seemed to me more like a wizardry session than a musical rehearsal. David demonstrated amazing sounds, passages, and techniques; something I had never heard before and never imagined possible. Some of these inspiring sounds found their way into the composition and they echo frequently throughout the solo clarinet part.
The concerto opens with a slow but intense movement titled Pastoral Doyna. A Doyna is a lament-like melody – both declamatory and melancholic – of Eastern European origin, most likely Rumanian, Gypsy, or Jewish. The opening by the string ensemble is reminiscent of the awakening sound of nature. On top of the busy accompaniment the clarinet enters with occasional shouts, echoes, and cry-like gestures.
The second movement is a sort of a wedding waltz, titled Nigun of the Seven Circles. The name goes back to the old Jewish tradition according to which a bride has to circle around the bridegroom seven times before the actual start of the marriage ceremony. The nature of this movement is a mixture of irony and passion, humor and pain. At the end of the waltz the clarinetist is invited to play a free cadenza and improvise on previous motives and melodic patterns. The movement ends with a return to the orchestra, with a soulful lament and quiet murmuring of the soloist.
The third and last movement of the concerto is titled Halleluya. It is inspired by the textual content, vibrant rhythms, and many musical instruments suggested in the 150th Psalm. Toward the end of this movement, there is a second solo cadenza in a perpetual motion style, where upon the players of the orchestra join in and add their voices to the pandemonium with a song of praise: “Halleluya!”
Overview: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Born May 7, 1840, Votkinsk, Russia; died: November 6, 1893, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Work Composed: 1877
Outside of the Viennese composers who specialized in the genre, no composer took so much delight in the waltz as Tchaikovsky, or poured so many different moods into it. Of course, Americans are thoroughly acquainted with the waltzes from The Nutcracker; and his other great ballets, Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, also contain memorable waltzes. But his other work is dotted with waltzes, from the orchestral suites, to the piano collections, to the Serenade for Strings, to his final two symphonies – though the waltz in the Pathetique symphony is a little off-kilter, with five beats replacing the usual three-plus-three beats.
This abundance of waltzes means that even a piece as supremely charming as this one must compete with its own creator’s other works for a hearing. And when you throw in the fact that the Valse-Scherzo is in a nonstandard format – not a program filler like a symphony or concerto, and not a program opener like an overture – it’s unsurprising that, despite its obvious attractions, it doesn’t often make it onto the concert stage.
The Valse-Scherzo has been described as a “miniature concerto.” After a brief introduction, it’s off to the races, and in this race, the violin is always the leader, with the orchestra as accompanist. Like several other works on this program, the piece is in ABA form, in which two sections based on the same musical material frame a contrasting middle section. (Tchaikovsky goes one step further here: All three sections are themselves miniature ABA forms.) The middle section is more introspective then the first – well, it could hardly be less introspective – and ends with a violin cadenza leading back to the opening theme. A flashy coda wraps things up. The modulations are bold throughout the piece, but their purpose is coloristic rather than structural; they’re brief excursions, charming and delighting us rather rather than taking us into new tonal areas.
The Valse-Scherzo is dedicated to violinist Iosif Kotek, a former composition student of Tchaikovsky’s who survives as a footnote in music history through this dedication and, more importantly, through the advice he gave Tchaikovsky with regard to the violin writing in his next published work, the great Violin Concerto.
Overview: Roger Smalley
Born June 26, 1943, Manchester, United Kingdom; died August 18, 2015, Sydney, Australia
Work Composed: 2006
Roger Smalley was one of many of excellent contemporary composers who have had a hard time getting their music heard by a wide audience. Though he always regarded composition as his chief interest, Smalley also made major contributions as a pianist and conductor. A sought-after modern composer in his native England – with numerous BBC commissions to his credit – Smalley became a major figure in the western Australian music scene after moving to Perth in 1976.
Smalley began his career as an avant-garde composer. His studies included a year with arch-modernist Karlheinz Stockhausen, and he was one of the founders of the live-electronic group Intermodulation. But when academic music began shifting away from dogmatic atonality in the late 1970s, he successfully made the transition back to a more approachable form of music. His later music perfectly embodies Aaron Copland’s ideal for modern music, which he expounded upon in a 1941 essay: “There is no reason why it should not be a music that exploits all those new devices discovered during the first years of the twentieth century. Above all, it must be fresh in feeling. In no sense must it be capable of being interpreted as a writing down to the level of the public.”
Smalley was a meticulous composer. “By the time the score was ready, you could be certain every note had been considered, every detail was in place,” wrote his colleague Andrew Ford. “Roger's music was exceptionally well-crafted and he valued this in the music of others.”
Footwork (originally titled Birthday Tango) is one of the most programmed of his later works. It received the 2007 award for “Best Composition by an Australian Composer” from the Australasian Performing Rights Association. It’s in ABA form.
It begins cinematically in a humorously ominous way, as if someone were sneaking through a dark kitchen to the refrigerator to get that piece of cheese that his diet – rigorously enforced by his wife – forbids. (Hijinks will ensue.) But the piece goes beyond the picturesque: Smalley’s imagination seems endlessly inventive, and the dissonance of some sections shows that, while Smalley learned to write approachable music, he didn’t forget the lessons he learned from Stockhausen.
Overview: Antonín Dvořák
Born September 8, 1841, Nelahozeves, Czech Republic; died: May 1, 1904, Prague, Czech Republic
Work Composed: 1894-1895
For European musicians in the 19th Century, the United States was where you went to get rich. Musicians went on grueling tours, such as Russian pianist Anton Rubinstein’s legendary 1873-74 visit, during which he gave 260 concerts in 242 days. Dvořák’s motivation for moving to United States was no different. Struggling to get by in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1892 he accepted the directorship of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City at a then-eyeball-popping salary of $15,000 annually. When he left the United States in 1895, he cited homesickness as a reason, but it’s also true that the Panic of 1893 had financially weakened the conservatory, and his salary had been cut to $8,000 the previous year.
Since Dvořák intended to stay in the United States for an extended period, if not permanently, he threw himself wholeheartedly into American musical life. He wrote articles on the state of American music; he met leading musicians, and perhaps more importantly, he met less famous musicians such as singer Harry Burleigh, who introduced Dvořák to African American spirituals.
The “American-ness” of Dvořák’s American music has been long argued. There are two important things to keep in mind. First, Dvořák’s America was very unlike our America, and while it was a melting pot, just like today a great many ingredients had not yet melted. Therefore, Dvořák saw the music of recent European immigrants as legitimate material for a truly American music. In an 1894 letter, Dvořák wrote that the influence of America on his music meant using folk songs “that are Negro, Indian, Irish, etc.,” and the opening of the American Suite contains a good example: The third bar contains a short-long rhythm that’s so distinctively Scottish that it’s called a “Scotch snap.”
Second, the style of Dvořák’s music changes during the time he’s in America. It doesn’t occur all at once. The New World symphony, for instance, despite its thematic material, is composed very much in the Germanic tradition. But some of his later American works, such as this suite and the “American” String Quartet, Op. 96, are radically simplified relative to Dvořák’s earlier music. There’s very little traditional – i.e., Germanic – thematic development, and the emphasis is on immediate comprehension. This stylistic change isn’t exactly flattering to Americans, but it’s a understandable, especially considering that Dvořák spent some time in rural areas, such as the Czech colony in Spillville, Iowa.
All five movements are in one version or another of ABA form. In the lyrical opening Andante, the first section is itself a miniature ABA, in which Dvořák shows that the piece, though simple, is by no means simple-minded: The second theme we hear uses the final bar of the first theme as the beginning a new theme; and after that, we hear a third theme, based on the end of the previous new theme. So a subtle evolution takes place; the first theme is related to the second, and the second to the third, but the first and third themes are unrelated. The middle section is rustic and vigorous.
In the second movement, spirited outer sections frame a lyrical middle section. Part of the movement’s charm derives from Dvořák’s avoidance of standard four-plus-four-bar phrase lengths. The third movement is marked alla Pollacca – “in Polish style” – in which each section is a miniature ABA. The opening theme, and the theme of the final B section, are loosely related to the first movement’s opening theme, adding a higher level of cohesion to the work.
The slow fourth movement begins with a wistful melody that oscillates between two chords – one minor, one major. The brief middle section uses the main theme as accompaniment, and the shortened repeat ends, not on the expected major chord, but on the plaintive minor one. The finale finds Dvořák in his most typically Czech mood – but are these American Czechs? Dvořák brings back the first movement’s opening theme at the very end to tie things up.
>>VIEW FULL SEASON
Concert overview:
Very few of you will have heard this music before – even the oft-recorded Tchaikovsky, the most familiar work here, is rarely performed live. But after this program, you may well find yourself humming something you heard here. All these works are appealing and approachable – so lucid that you’ll grasp them the first time you hear them, but so lovely that you’ll want to hear them again. And all of them embody the spirit of the dance, whether it’s Tchaikovsky’s tipsy waltz, Ben-Amots’s sultry wedding dance, or Smalley’s witty but sensuous tango.
The Kodály and Ben-Amots works are based on Eastern European folk music (though all the themes in Ben-Amots’s concerto are original). For Americans, the term “folk music” often conjures ideas of simple, blowin’-in-the-wind sorts of tunes; but Eastern European folk music is famous – or notorious, if you’re playing it – for its rhythmic complexity. The melodic style is often highly ornamented, and both composers go to great lengths to recreate that style here.
Overview: Zoltán Kodály
Born December 16, 1882, Kecskemét, Hungary; died: March 6, 1967, Hegyvidék, Budapest, Hungary
Work Composed: 1927, 1929
If I were to name the composer whose works are the most perfect embodiment of the Hungarian spirit, I would answer, Kodály. His work proves his faith in the Hungarian spirit. The obvious explanation is that all Kodály’s composing activity is rooted only in Hungarian soil, but the deep inner reason is his unshakable faith and trust in the constructive power and future of his people. – Béla Bartók
Zoltán Kodály’s music is not widely performed, yet the composer’s name is securely enshrined in music history for two reasons besides the inherent quality of his work: First, he created the Kodály method of music education, which has spread worldwide; and second, there’s his groundbreaking work, with Béla Bartók, in collecting Balkan folk songs.
Kodály was the instigator here, the first of the two to go into the countryside searching for authentic folk music; Bartók, though a year older, went on his first expedition a year or two later. Carrying an Edison cylinder recorder, they traveled from village to village; at each one, they would get the village’s oldest musicians to sing and play for them, record them on primitive wax cylinders, and transcribe them when they returned to Budapest. From the time of Kodály’s first expedition in 1905 to his last in 1950, the two of them collected and transcribed some 15,000 songs from Eastern Europe and Anatolia. They are the foundation of both composers’ work, even when they are not explicitly used.
While Bartók’s interest was the entire region’s folk music, Kodály’s interest was more focused on Hungary and Hungarian enclaves such as Transylvania in modern Romania. Dances of Marosszek, based on folk songs from a section of Transylvania Kodály had visited while growing up, was composed for piano from 1923 to 1927, and arranged for orchestra in 1929. It’s in a rondo form, with the slow, poignant main theme recurring around three contrasting fast interludes, and ending with a vertiginous coda. Though you’ll hear the opening theme a lot, you’ll never hear it twice exactly the same way, as Kodály varies both the music and its orchestral presentation.
The pastoral second interlude is notable for the way in which Kodály faithfully recreates the ornament-encrusted folk style in the solo instruments.
Overview: Ofer Ben-Amots
Born October 20, 1955, Haifa, Israel
Work Composed: 2006-2008
The solo part in this concerto by internationally renowned but locally residing Ben-Amots takes to a new level a fundamental trait of his music – his mastery of idiomatic writing, meaning that the music is always uniquely fitted to the instrument that plays it. The composer has written the following program notes:
The source of inspiration to this concerto is the unique musical language of star clarinetist and virtuoso klezmer David Krakauer. Over the years I have collaborated with David on several performances and recording projects. This is, however, the first time that I wrote a composition entirely dedicated to him and with the intention to prominently feature his distinct playing style. In preparing the composition, I visited David in New York City where we went over some early sketches. The few hours we spent together seemed to me more like a wizardry session than a musical rehearsal. David demonstrated amazing sounds, passages, and techniques; something I had never heard before and never imagined possible. Some of these inspiring sounds found their way into the composition and they echo frequently throughout the solo clarinet part.
The concerto opens with a slow but intense movement titled Pastoral Doyna. A Doyna is a lament-like melody – both declamatory and melancholic – of Eastern European origin, most likely Rumanian, Gypsy, or Jewish. The opening by the string ensemble is reminiscent of the awakening sound of nature. On top of the busy accompaniment the clarinet enters with occasional shouts, echoes, and cry-like gestures.
The second movement is a sort of a wedding waltz, titled Nigun of the Seven Circles. The name goes back to the old Jewish tradition according to which a bride has to circle around the bridegroom seven times before the actual start of the marriage ceremony. The nature of this movement is a mixture of irony and passion, humor and pain. At the end of the waltz the clarinetist is invited to play a free cadenza and improvise on previous motives and melodic patterns. The movement ends with a return to the orchestra, with a soulful lament and quiet murmuring of the soloist.
The third and last movement of the concerto is titled Halleluya. It is inspired by the textual content, vibrant rhythms, and many musical instruments suggested in the 150th Psalm. Toward the end of this movement, there is a second solo cadenza in a perpetual motion style, where upon the players of the orchestra join in and add their voices to the pandemonium with a song of praise: “Halleluya!”
Overview: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Born May 7, 1840, Votkinsk, Russia; died: November 6, 1893, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Work Composed: 1877
Outside of the Viennese composers who specialized in the genre, no composer took so much delight in the waltz as Tchaikovsky, or poured so many different moods into it. Of course, Americans are thoroughly acquainted with the waltzes from The Nutcracker; and his other great ballets, Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, also contain memorable waltzes. But his other work is dotted with waltzes, from the orchestral suites, to the piano collections, to the Serenade for Strings, to his final two symphonies – though the waltz in the Pathetique symphony is a little off-kilter, with five beats replacing the usual three-plus-three beats.
This abundance of waltzes means that even a piece as supremely charming as this one must compete with its own creator’s other works for a hearing. And when you throw in the fact that the Valse-Scherzo is in a nonstandard format – not a program filler like a symphony or concerto, and not a program opener like an overture – it’s unsurprising that, despite its obvious attractions, it doesn’t often make it onto the concert stage.
The Valse-Scherzo has been described as a “miniature concerto.” After a brief introduction, it’s off to the races, and in this race, the violin is always the leader, with the orchestra as accompanist. Like several other works on this program, the piece is in ABA form, in which two sections based on the same musical material frame a contrasting middle section. (Tchaikovsky goes one step further here: All three sections are themselves miniature ABA forms.) The middle section is more introspective then the first – well, it could hardly be less introspective – and ends with a violin cadenza leading back to the opening theme. A flashy coda wraps things up. The modulations are bold throughout the piece, but their purpose is coloristic rather than structural; they’re brief excursions, charming and delighting us rather rather than taking us into new tonal areas.
The Valse-Scherzo is dedicated to violinist Iosif Kotek, a former composition student of Tchaikovsky’s who survives as a footnote in music history through this dedication and, more importantly, through the advice he gave Tchaikovsky with regard to the violin writing in his next published work, the great Violin Concerto.
Overview: Roger Smalley
Born June 26, 1943, Manchester, United Kingdom; died August 18, 2015, Sydney, Australia
Work Composed: 2006
Roger Smalley was one of many of excellent contemporary composers who have had a hard time getting their music heard by a wide audience. Though he always regarded composition as his chief interest, Smalley also made major contributions as a pianist and conductor. A sought-after modern composer in his native England – with numerous BBC commissions to his credit – Smalley became a major figure in the western Australian music scene after moving to Perth in 1976.
Smalley began his career as an avant-garde composer. His studies included a year with arch-modernist Karlheinz Stockhausen, and he was one of the founders of the live-electronic group Intermodulation. But when academic music began shifting away from dogmatic atonality in the late 1970s, he successfully made the transition back to a more approachable form of music. His later music perfectly embodies Aaron Copland’s ideal for modern music, which he expounded upon in a 1941 essay: “There is no reason why it should not be a music that exploits all those new devices discovered during the first years of the twentieth century. Above all, it must be fresh in feeling. In no sense must it be capable of being interpreted as a writing down to the level of the public.”
Smalley was a meticulous composer. “By the time the score was ready, you could be certain every note had been considered, every detail was in place,” wrote his colleague Andrew Ford. “Roger's music was exceptionally well-crafted and he valued this in the music of others.”
Footwork (originally titled Birthday Tango) is one of the most programmed of his later works. It received the 2007 award for “Best Composition by an Australian Composer” from the Australasian Performing Rights Association. It’s in ABA form.
It begins cinematically in a humorously ominous way, as if someone were sneaking through a dark kitchen to the refrigerator to get that piece of cheese that his diet – rigorously enforced by his wife – forbids. (Hijinks will ensue.) But the piece goes beyond the picturesque: Smalley’s imagination seems endlessly inventive, and the dissonance of some sections shows that, while Smalley learned to write approachable music, he didn’t forget the lessons he learned from Stockhausen.
Overview: Antonín Dvořák
Born September 8, 1841, Nelahozeves, Czech Republic; died: May 1, 1904, Prague, Czech Republic
Work Composed: 1894-1895
For European musicians in the 19th Century, the United States was where you went to get rich. Musicians went on grueling tours, such as Russian pianist Anton Rubinstein’s legendary 1873-74 visit, during which he gave 260 concerts in 242 days. Dvořák’s motivation for moving to United States was no different. Struggling to get by in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1892 he accepted the directorship of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City at a then-eyeball-popping salary of $15,000 annually. When he left the United States in 1895, he cited homesickness as a reason, but it’s also true that the Panic of 1893 had financially weakened the conservatory, and his salary had been cut to $8,000 the previous year.
Since Dvořák intended to stay in the United States for an extended period, if not permanently, he threw himself wholeheartedly into American musical life. He wrote articles on the state of American music; he met leading musicians, and perhaps more importantly, he met less famous musicians such as singer Harry Burleigh, who introduced Dvořák to African American spirituals.
The “American-ness” of Dvořák’s American music has been long argued. There are two important things to keep in mind. First, Dvořák’s America was very unlike our America, and while it was a melting pot, just like today a great many ingredients had not yet melted. Therefore, Dvořák saw the music of recent European immigrants as legitimate material for a truly American music. In an 1894 letter, Dvořák wrote that the influence of America on his music meant using folk songs “that are Negro, Indian, Irish, etc.,” and the opening of the American Suite contains a good example: The third bar contains a short-long rhythm that’s so distinctively Scottish that it’s called a “Scotch snap.”
Second, the style of Dvořák’s music changes during the time he’s in America. It doesn’t occur all at once. The New World symphony, for instance, despite its thematic material, is composed very much in the Germanic tradition. But some of his later American works, such as this suite and the “American” String Quartet, Op. 96, are radically simplified relative to Dvořák’s earlier music. There’s very little traditional – i.e., Germanic – thematic development, and the emphasis is on immediate comprehension. This stylistic change isn’t exactly flattering to Americans, but it’s a understandable, especially considering that Dvořák spent some time in rural areas, such as the Czech colony in Spillville, Iowa.
All five movements are in one version or another of ABA form. In the lyrical opening Andante, the first section is itself a miniature ABA, in which Dvořák shows that the piece, though simple, is by no means simple-minded: The second theme we hear uses the final bar of the first theme as the beginning a new theme; and after that, we hear a third theme, based on the end of the previous new theme. So a subtle evolution takes place; the first theme is related to the second, and the second to the third, but the first and third themes are unrelated. The middle section is rustic and vigorous.
In the second movement, spirited outer sections frame a lyrical middle section. Part of the movement’s charm derives from Dvořák’s avoidance of standard four-plus-four-bar phrase lengths. The third movement is marked alla Pollacca – “in Polish style” – in which each section is a miniature ABA. The opening theme, and the theme of the final B section, are loosely related to the first movement’s opening theme, adding a higher level of cohesion to the work.
The slow fourth movement begins with a wistful melody that oscillates between two chords – one minor, one major. The brief middle section uses the main theme as accompaniment, and the shortened repeat ends, not on the expected major chord, but on the plaintive minor one. The finale finds Dvořák in his most typically Czech mood – but are these American Czechs? Dvořák brings back the first movement’s opening theme at the very end to tie things up.
>>VIEW FULL SEASON