BBC Symphony Orchestra perform Dvorak's Concerto for cello and orchestra and Smetana's Ma Vlast - BBC Prom 8 at The Royal Albert Hall London England 2011-07-20, broadcast on BBC Radio 3 "Through the Night" 2012-03-08 HD stream master
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John Shea presents a complete performance of Smetana's Ma Vlast from the 2011 BBC Proms by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Jiri Belohlavek.
Smetana’s cycle of six patriotic symphonic poems, published under the general title of Má vlast (‘My Fatherland’), is without question his greatest achievement in the genre. It was largely written between 1874 and 1879 but was by no means his first venture into the realms of orchestral tone-poetry. Smetana was still in his thirties when, in the summer of 1857, he visited Liszt in Weimar, where he heard the first performances of A Faust Symphony and the symphonic poem Die Ideale. He was overwhelmed and was soon working on a series of his own tone-poems based on literary subjects (after Shakespeare, Schiller, etc.) but, daringly crafted as these pieces undoubtedly are, none quite matches the imagination, vividness or assured writing that Smetana would later achieve with Má vlast. All the more wonder, then, that this formidable edifice grew in the midst of the composer’s debilitating bad health.
In the summer of 1874 Smetana suffered a throat infection followed by a rash and an apparent ‘blockage to the ears’. By mid-August, unable to work, he transferred his duties as principal conductor of Prague’s Provisional Theatre to his deputy. A press announcement stated that he had ‘become ill as a result of nervous strain caused by certain people recently’. Worst of all, by the autumn, he lost hearing in his right ear, while his left ear failed him soon afterwards. Even the availability of funds raised by former students for medical aid (from abroad) failed to help. And the situation was to worsen, leading to depression, insomnia and hallucinations, together with giddiness, cramp and a temporary loss of speech. Smetana’s interesting but disconcertingly confused Prague Carnival for orchestra can be heard as a symptom of either progressive invention or mental decline. The jury is still out as to the answer.
Má vlast, however, is something else. It opens auspiciously. A pair of harps set the bardic scene, the bard in question being Lumír, who relates the pride and melancholy of his people’s history. First we hear the Vyšehrad motif, representing a castle on a rocky outcrop that towers over the landscape beside the River Vltava near Prague. The principal arguments, all of them orchestrated with a keen sense of aural narrative, suggest the lives and loves of medieval knights, ferocious fighting and, ultimately (with a sequence of diminished seventh chords), the collapse of the citadel, even though Lumír’s songs seem to transcend temporal tragedy.
Immediately beyond Vyšehrad comes the cycle’s most celebrated single movement. The two flutes that burble into earshot at the start of the piece are the two springs – one cold, the other warm – that grant the great Vltava River life. As Smetana himself writes, they soon form ‘a single current’, then (Smetana again) ‘the course of the Vltava [flows] 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 towards Prague, past the Vyšehrad, and then majestically vanishes into the distance, ending at the Labe [the Elbe, in German]’. At the end of the piece, Vyšehrad’s mighty motif rings out resplendently.
Šárka’s shock-filled opening moments provide a workable template for all that is passionate, impulsive and reckless in the best action-film music. The first idea, with its hectoring sequences, sets the mood. Šárka is a figure from ancient Bohemian myth, a time when matriarchy ruled, before subjugation by men prompted revenge (Šárka herself was the victim of an unfaithful lover). Concerning Šárka, Smetana wrote: ‘In this composition I wanted not only to portray this wild and rugged landscape, but also to tell the story of … a young woman who swears to take vengeance on the entire male sex, motivated by anger at her unfaithful lover.’ The chain of events includes a march of the hero, a love scene, the sleeping men’s snoring (low bassoon) and, after a weeping clarinet, the final, blood-curdling massacre, where the trombones make a spectacular contribution.
The fourth leg of our journey, From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields, opens to a panoramic soundscape which, for descriptive power and atmosphere, has few if any rivals among the annals of 19th-century orchestral tone-poetry. Here we encounter not only woods and fields but various life forms that function within them – from flora and fauna and creatures great and small to visiting peasants dancing the polka. After the widescreen opening, a distant folk song sounds before a strange, curling fugue takes over, followed by a return of the folk song and, presently, a rustic polka. The movement ends where it began, with the sad folk song, this time sounding an air of defiance.
With Tábor, initial signs are disquieting. The wars fought in the early 15th century by the Hussites, supporters of martyred priest Jan Hus, were not only a forerunner to the wars of the Reformation, but a key moment in the history of Czech nationalism. As Smetana wrote, ‘The composition is built [on the chorale] … it shows the strong will, the might, the struggles, the bravery and the stubbornness of the Hussites. It is simply their fame, their greatness.’ Both Tábor and the thematically related last tone-poem of the cycle, Blaník, tell of the painful conflict between Bohemian Protestantism on the one hand and the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire on the other. Tábor is racked with conflict where, in the midst of an anguished development section, the theme itself comes under repeated attack, though it eventually re-emerges fully intact, played Lento maestoso.
Blaník follows Tábor without a break, the two pieces mirroring one other. ‘After their defeat,’ wrote Smetana, ‘the warriors retreat to the caves inside the mountain Blaník, where they sleep and wait until their fatherland calls them again in an hour of the utmost need. Thus the same motifs [ie, the chorale] supply the basis here as in Tábor … A brief intermezzo tells of a shepherd boy blowing his shawm in the countryside near Blaník.’ The structure here is more episodic than in the previous tone-poems (one particular section sounds like a precursor of Wolf-Ferrari’s Donna Diana overture), with the Hussite song proving a vital thematic component, especially when sounded in victorious counterpoint with the Vyšehrad motif, an unforgettable moment that helps bring Má vlast to a mighty and uplifting close.
01 Introduction
02 Dvorak, Antonin [1841-1904]
Concerto for cello and orchestra (Op.104) in B minor
Jean-Guihen Queyras (cello), BBC Symphony Orchestra, Jiri Belohlávek (conductor)
03 Talk
04 Smetana, Bedrich [1824-1884]
Ma vlast - cycle of symphonic poems
BBC Symphony Orchestra, Jiri Belohlávek (conductor)
05 Outro
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