Benny@100 
Bandoneon 
Lecuonerias 
Chiquita Blues 
 

The Cuban-American composer, saxophonist and clarinettist Paquito D’Rivera was born in Havana. After working with several Cuban ensembles (including the National Symphony Orchestra), D’Rivera decided to defect to the United States in 1980. Since then he has had an extremely successful career as both a jazz and classical musician in America with twelve Grammy Awards to his name. Cape Cod Files was written in 2009 for the clarinettist Jon Manasse and pianist Jon Nakamatsu and was first performed by them on 11 August 2009 in Cotuit, Massachusetts, as part of the 30th Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival. 

D’Riveira has written that ‘Benny@100’ was ‘inspired by Benny Goodman’s unique way of jazz phrasing, as well as his incursions in the so-called classical arena. This movement is a celebration of 100th birthday.’ ‘Bandoneon’ evokes the sound of the Bandoneon, the instrument that is sometimes described as ‘the soul of the tango’. D’Riveira writes that ‘Lecuonerias’ comprises ‘unaccompanied solo clarinet improvisations around some of the melodies written by the foremost Cuban composer, Ernesto Lecuona.’ And ‘Chiquita Blues’ was inspired by a novel about the extraordinary life of the Cuban singer and actress known as Chiquita (Espiridona Cenda) who was just 26 inches tall and had a successful career on stage in New York. 

© Nigel Simeone

Allegretto
Andante con moto
Menuetto allegretto
Allegretto

Danzi was brought up in Mannheim, where he joined the orchestra run by the Elector Karl Theodor while still a teenager, as a cellist. His father was principal cellist in the orchestra (which moved, with Karl Theodor, to Munich) and he was praised by Mozart for his playing in the first performance of Idomeneo in 1781. In 1784, he was succeeded by his son, who later became an assistant Kapellmeister in Munich, before taking on the role of Kapellmeister in Stuttgart and later Karlsruhe. Though Danzi was a fine cellist, his fame as a composer rests largely on his nine woodwind quintets – works which show a consistent understanding of idiomatic wind writing.

The Quintet in B flat was one of a set of three first published in 1821, with a dedication to Anton Reicha – Danzi’s most important predecessor as a composer of wind quintets. After an amiable and well-crafted first movement in B flat major, Danzi reveals a more pensive side to his nature in the short Andante con moto, in D minor, its main thematic material being heard first on the oboe, then the bassoon. The Minuet is sturdy, while in the Trio section Danzi creates a witty dialogue between all five instruments. The last movement is a jaunty rondo.

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El amor brujo, known in English as Love, the Magician began as gitaneria (danced entertainment) in 1915. In due course, Falla expanded the orchestration and made some other changes before the definitive version of the ballet was given for the first time on 22 May 1925, at the Théâtre du Trianon-Lyrique in Paris, conducted by the composer. Four years before then, Falla’s own piano arrangement of the Ritual Fire Dance was published in London and it immediately became a very popular recital piece with pianists including Arthur Rubinstein and Myra Hess. The Pantomime that precedes it here begins with some bold splashes of Andalusian colour before turning to a lilting theme in 7/8 time. In the ballet, the Ritual Fire Dance is the moment when the gypsy Candela seeks to cast out the malign ghost of her dead husband. During this dance, which grows from sinister beginnings to a ferocious climax, the ghost is drawn into the flames and vanishes forever. Falla made the present arrangement of the Pantomime and Ritual Fire Dance for piano and string quintet in 1926.

© Nigel Simeone 

Prologue. Lent, sostenuto e molto risoluto – Poco animando
Sérénade. Modérément animé
Final. Animé, léger et nerveux

‘Where is French music? Where are the old harpsichordists who had so much true music?’ It was thoughts like this that prompted Debussy to embark on a series of sonatas at the start of World War One. Weakened by cancer, he only lived to complete three of them. The Cello Sonata was the first to be finished, in the summer of 1915, and it was originally going to have a title: ‘Pierrot angry with the moon’. As well as its links to a vanished past, the Cello Sonata has debts to more recent music including use of a cyclic theme. Debussy used this device in his early String Quartet but now there is greater refinement and austerity. The first movement opens with a gesture that introduces the motif which unites many of the musical ideas in the work (and which recalls Baroque ornamentation). The second movement is a ghostly Serenade full of enigmatic harmonies, and this leads to a more flowing and animated finale which seems reluctant to settle until the closing D minor chords.

© Nigel Simeone 2015

IV. The Snow is Dancing
II. Jimbo’s Lullaby
V. The Little Shepherd
III. Serenade for the Doll

Dedicated to ‘my dear little Chou-Chou, with her father’s tender excuses for what follows’, Children’s Corner was written in 1908 and dedicated to his daughter Claude-Emma. However, it was never intended as a piece for children to play, and the suite was introduced to the Parisian musical public by the virtuoso pianist Harold Bauer on 18 December 1908. Aside from its technical demands, another reason why this is not really ‘children’s’ music is its sophisticated use of parody and quotation. There’s a rather tragic postscript to the story of the dedication: Chou-Chou died aged only fourteen, a year after Debussy himself.

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Debussy composed his first set of twelve Préludes in an intense burst of creative activity between 7 December 1909 and 4 February 1910 (the manuscript of La cathédrale engloutie is one of only three in the set not to have a precise date). The whole set was published in April 1910 and Debussy himself gave the first public performance of La cathédrale engloutie on 5 May 1910. In this piece, which moves from the mysterious to the majestic and back again, Debussy conjures up the mythical city of Ys, long sunken into the sea, and its cathedral which was said to rise above the waves at certain times. By calling it a ‘prélude’, Debussy was returning to ostensibly traditional forms (he was subsequently to write études and three sonatas), while remaining daringly original, evoking the sounds of bells, chanting, and a noble organ-like climax. However, the title is only printed at the end of the piece – emphasising that the piece was intended, first of all, to be heard and understood without needing to rely on a specific programme.

© Nigel Simeone

De l’aube à midi sur la mer (From dawn to midday on the sea) 
Jeu de vagues (Play of the waves) 
Dialogue du vent et de la mer (Dialogue of the wind and the sea) 
 

The sea’s central importance to Debussy is well documented in his letters. In September 1903 he wrote to his close friend and fellow composer Andre ́Messager about La mer, noting the amusing irony of composing the piece in the resolutely landlocked department of the Yonne in north-west Burgundy, and describing his approach to the work with an interesting analogy to landscape painting: 

‘I’m working on three symphonic sketches … the whole to be called La mer. You’re unaware, maybe, that I was intended for the noble career of a sailor and have only deviated from that path thanks to the quirks of fate. Even so, I’ve retained a sincere devotion to the sea. To which you’ll reply that the Atlantic doesn’t exactly wash the foothills of Burgundy, and that the result could be one of those hack landscapes done in the studio! But I have innumerable memories, and those, in my view, are worth more than a reality which tends to weigh too heavily on the imagination.’ 

In July 1904 Debussy left his first wife Lilly Texier and eloped to Jersey with the singer Emma Bardac. In an undated letter from the Grand Hotel in St Helier he wrote to his publisher Durand that ‘The sea has behaved beautifully towards me and shown me all her guises.’ He returned to the subject while staying at the Grand Hotel in Eastbourne, where he was correcting the proofs of La mer: ‘It’s a charming, peaceful spot. The sea unfurls itself with an utterly British correctness.’ 

The English critic Edward Lockspeiser was unhesitating in describing La mer as ‘the greatest example of an orchestral Impressionist work’ and it does not seem unduly far-fetched to see a parallel in Claude Monet’s seascapes from the 1890s. The three movements form a magnificent large-scale symphonic whole which is fully maintained in André Caplet’s brilliant arrangement for two pianos. A gifted composer in his own right and a trusted friend of Debussy’s, Caplet has transcribed the work with dazzling effectiveness, remaining entirely true to the spirit of Debussy’s orchestral original. 

© Nigel Simeone

By 1909, Debussy had already composed some of his defining works, including the enthusiastically-received tone poem, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894). He had also heard and experienced music outside of the Western Classical tradition.

The fourth prelude of Book I, “Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir” (“The sounds and fragrances swirl through the evening air”), takes both its title and inspiration from the poetry of Charles Baudelaire. It is a gentle waltz-like piece in A major with melodies that seem to float as effortlessly as the sounds and fragrances in Baudelaire’s line. Even the harmonies seem tinged with a dusky hue, giving musical evocation to the twilight setting. The prelude is built around three principal ideas and embodies a sort of ternary design, with a brief middle section in the key of A-flat major. It is gentle and subdued, and nowhere is to be found a disturbing phrase or melodic figure. The only true point of contrast within the prelude is a melody in octaves accompanied by a persistent sixteenth-note countermelody. This, however, simply returns us to a variant of the opening melodic motif and the prelude’s serene close.

Des pas sur la neige (Footsteps in the Snow, No. 6) shows Debussy’s unparalleled creativity in using harmonic colours. An omnipresent ostinato runs throughout as a representation, perhaps, of a barren, snow-covered land. Musically, a similar parallel exists: it is a ‘blank’ canvas upon which an array of harmonies are added at different points. These rich sonorities transform the scenery from desolate to ominous to poignant, all before returning to the original key of D minor.

One of the most technically impressive of this first volume is Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest (What the West Wind Saw, No. 7) – robust and at times aggressive, this prelude captures the wind’s fury with the sweeping arpeggios, dominant 7th chords, and perhaps surprisingly dense textures – not to mention the massive chords at the conclusion which maximize the instrument’s low register. However furious the character may be, Debussy’s signature innovative style remains present.

Claude Debussy (1862–1918) composed twenty-four préludes in all, published in two books in 1910 and 1913. Unusually, the titles are only printed at the end of each piece, underlining Debussy’s wish that this was music to be understood on its own terms as well as through descriptive or programmatic means. Each of them is a beautifully conceived entity: some are tender or alluring, some are capricious, while others are flamboyant and even elemental. But whether taken individually or collectively (Debussy himself was happy either way, often playing individual préludes in recitals), they represent the composer at his most distinctive.  

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The test pieces specially composed for the final exams at the Paris Conservatoire have something of a bad reputation. Many of them are routine competition showpieces but sometimes a work of much more lasting importance was written for these occasions. Such is the case with Debussy’s Première Rapsodie, completed in January 1910 for the clarinet concours at the Conservatoire that summer (Debussy also dashed off a sight-reading test for the same competition, published as his Petite pièce for clarinet and piano). Debussy himself was a member of the jury and he found most of the players unsatisfactory in the Rapsodie. However, the eventual winner, Vandercruyssen, impressed him. Debussy wrote to his friend and publisher Jacques Durand that Vandercruyssen ‘played by heart, and like a great musician’. A year later, Debussy prepared the better-known version of the piece for clarinet and orchestra, but the original with piano is superbly written for both instruments. The clarinettist David Pino has claimed, with justification, that the Première rapsodie was ‘the first major work for solo clarinet written in the twentieth century’.

It opens in a mood of stillness (marked ‘Rêveusement lent’ – ‘dreamily slow’), with the piano adding gentle momentum in the accompaniment after a few bars, and the clarinet – instructed to play pianissimo but also ‘sweetly’ and ‘penetrating’ – introducing a languorous theme that gradually becomes more animated. A sudden speeding up introduces a more capricious idea that is briefly stopped in its tracks by a series of trills and a return to earlier music. But the faster speed soon returns, starting with rumbling low notes on the piano and a series of upward flourishes on the clarinet. This gives way to a new section marked ‘Modérément animé (‘Moderately animated) and ‘playful’, a passage that quite brilliantly exploits the possibilities of the clarinet, especially its ability to play rapid figurations and lyrical lines. A return to the slower music gives way, finally, to a thrilling conclusion.

What makes this such an outstanding work is that Debussy combines extremely idiomatic writing – appropriate for a piece that was intended to demonstrate a player’s technical command – with musical ideas that have memorable substance. On 16 January 1911 the clarinettist Paul Mimart (to whom the work was dedicated) gave the first performance in a concert, at the Salle Gaveau in Paris, in one of the concerts promoted by the Société musicale indépendante. According to Debussy’s biographer Léon Valas, another performance took place at the end of 1911 in Russia, and it was greeted by the audience with confusion. A baffled Debussy wrote to a friend: ‘Surely this piece is one of the most immediately pleasing I have ever written!’

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Pastorale 
Interlude 
Finale 
 

Debussy originally planned a set of six instrumental sonatas but only lived to complete three of them. The first was for cello and piano (August 1915), the third for violin and piano (finished in April 1917), but in terms of instrumentation the most unusual of the three was the second sonata, scored for flute, viola and harp. Debussy completed it in October 1915 at the end of a productive summer spent on the Normandy coast, and the first performance took place on 7 November in Boston, Massachusetts. Debussy heard the work for the first time a month later, on 10 December, when it was given in Paris at one of the concerts put on by his publisher Durand. The viola part was played on that occasion by Darius Milhaud. 

The work was inspired by the clarity and elegant proportions of French Baroque music, but the musical language is very much of its own time. The ethereal Pastorale is based on fragmentary but distinctive musical ideas, while the central Interlude, delicately coloured in places by whole-tone harmonies, is marked ‘Tempo di minuetto’ – the most obvious nod to the Baroque. The finale is directed to be played ‘Allegro moderato ma risoluto’ and the muscular quality of the ideas presented at the start dominate the movement. There’s a brief recollection of the ‘Pastorale’ before a short, exultant coda. 

© Nigel Simeone 

Debussy’s String Quartet was first performed at the Société Nationale de Musique on 29 December 1893 – almost exactly a year before he shocked Paris with the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, the most laconic manifestation of his revolutionary creative spirit. The Quartet, composed just after the Prélude, is one of his earliest mature works – a piece that still has some roots in the musical language of César Franck but in which a fresh and brilliant imagination can be heard, not just in the free handling of forms, but also in the spectacularly inventive writing for string instruments – something absorbed by Ravel in the Quartet he wrote a decade later. The first movement is robust and confident, while the second, with its extensive use of pizzicato, hints at the Javanese music that Debussy heard at the 1889 Exposition. The slow movement begins with fragments of the theme split between the lower instruments before being introduced in full by the first violin, over rich chromatic harmonies. The finale has clear thematic links with the first. It starts hesitantly, gradually building up both tension and speed, on a melodic idea that is presented in different guises before reaching the dazzling conclusion in G major. 

Nigel Simeone © 2011 

Debussy was still in his twenties when he composed these two short pieces, and from a time before he created works that began to draw comparisons with the Impressionist artists, a comparison he never acknowledged himself. At the time he wrote his Arabesques in the 1890s, Art Nouveau was changing the face of Paris, and this seems to have been more an influence on Debussy than Impressionism. Art Nouveau’s simplicity of lines and shapes, rooted in the natural world, was of great appeal to Debussy, which reminded him of music from the French Baroque period, and he once wrote: “That was the age of the ‘wonderful arabesque’ when music was subject to the laws of beauty inscribed in the movements of Nature herself.”

© Music in the Round

This piece for flute is one of the most famous pieces for the instrument. It is named after the nymph Syrinx from Ancient Greek mythology. The flute-playing mischievous faun Pan falls in love with Syrinx, but she does not return his love so turns herself into a water reed and hides in the marshes…

Marcia. Allegro
Romanza. Adagio non troppo
Scherzo. Vivace
Tema con variazioni. Andante con moto
Rondo. Finale

Dohnányi was one of three important composers to emerge from Hungary at the turn of the twentieth century. The other two – Bartók and Kodály – both developed highly individual musical voices, partly through their exploration and study of folk music. Dohnányi, a brilliant pianist as well as a gifted composer, chose a different path. He became an enthusiastic disciple of Brahms (who reciprocated by arranging the Viennese première of Dohnányi’s Piano Quintet Op.1) and subsequently evolved a characteristic late-Romantic harmonic language. The Serenade for String Trio was written in 1902. The choice of instruments was surprising: since Mozart and Beethoven the string trio had been neglected but Dohnányi writes for this ensemble most convincingly. His revival of the form may well have encouraged its rediscovery by composers such as Max Reger and Schoenberg. Dohnányi’s Serenade is in five movements, the first of which is a March. The Romance is lyrical and beautifully crafted for the three instruments, and is followed by a quicksilver Scherzo. In the Theme and Variations, Dohnányi makes sure that each of the three instruments has a fair share of the thematic material and he composes some very resourceful variations. The Finale of this inventive and attractive work is an exuberant Rondo.

Nigel Simeone © 2011

Allegro appassionato
Intermezzo
Allegro con sentimento
Presto, quasi l’istesso tempo

Born in Hungary, Dohnányi’s early compositions had been praised by Brahms, and he always had a strong sense of being part of the Austro-German Romantic tradition. In this respect he was very different from his classmate at the Budapest Academy, Béla Bartók, but his music is always beautifully crafted and has very individual harmonic touches. The Sextet for piano, violin, viola, cello, clarinet and horn was completed on 3 April 1935 and it is the most unusually scored of his chamber works. It was first performed in Budapest on 17 June 1935, with the composer at the piano, and received warm reviews. One critic specifically praised the unusual choice of instruments, commenting that ‘the combination … is neither coincidental nor arbitrary.’

The musical structure is unified by Dohnányi’s use of a dramatic rising motif – often on the horn – that is first heard right at the start. The first movement is brooding and tense, but ends with hope (the rising motif returning in triumph). The Intermezzo includes a rather sinister march, while the third movement is a set of variations that includes one that is scherzo-like. This leads directly into the finale – an almost dizzyingly ebullient movement which suggests a kind of jazzed-up Brahms.

Nigel Simeone © 2011

Antal Doráti’s long and distinguished conducting career has tended to overshadow his work as a composer. As a brilliantly gifted teenager, he began his studies at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest at the age of fourteen and from the start, his musical development was in the best possible hands: his composition teachers included Zoltán Kodály and his piano teacher was Béla Bartók. After graduating from the Academy in 1924, he joined the music staff at the Budapest Opera, making his conducting debut the same year.  

Notable later orchestral appointments included posts with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Stockholm Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. His numerous recordings included a pioneering set of the complete Haydn symphonies, made for Decca with the Philharmonia Hungarica. 

Doráti also found time to compose a number of pieces, ranging from an opera (The Chosen) to orchestral works (including a symphony) and the present Duo concertante for oboe and piano, completed in 1984 and dedicated to the great Swiss oboist Heinz Holliger who gave the first performance in Washington, D.C. on 21 April 1984 with the pianist Karl Ritter. A modern re-interpretation of a Hungarian rhapsody, the structure draws on traditional Hungarian dance forms, opening with a slow lassú and following this with a friss – a quick movement marked molto vivace.  

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Duruflé was an exceptionally self-critical composer, leaving a very small output. He was even disparaging about the music allowed to be published, including pieces that enjoyed considerable success. He is best remembered for his organ music, and for choral works such as the Requiem and the Four Motets based on Gregorian chants. There are two purely instrumental pieces: the Trois Danses for orchestra (which Duruflé also arranged for two pianos and for solo piano), and the present Prélude, Récitatif et Variations, written in 1928 and dedicated to the memory of the great Parisian music publisher, Jacques Durand (1865–1928) who had published most of the major works of Debussy and Ravel as well as Saint-Saëns, Roussel and others. Scored for the unusual ensemble of flute, viola and piano, Duruflé’s ‘Prélude’ opens with a brooding piano introduction (notable for some beautiful harmonies) over which the viola introduces a song-like theme. The flute enters with a tender, plaintive melody as the texture becomes lighter and the tempo starts to ease forwards, soon engaging in a duet with the viola over an increasingly animated piano accompaniment. The music reaches an imposing climax before subsiding into the ‘Récitatif’, marked ‘Lent et triste’. An unaccompanied viola recitative leads to the final Variations. These begin with the theme played by the flute, followed by a rhapsodic set of variations full of imaginative instrumental colours and ending with a sense of joyous abandon. 

Nigel Simeone 2024

This piece brings our concert to a celebratory end, from Czech composer Anton Dvořák. Listen out for all the places it gets louder, or faster — or both! — or where the quartet hang back to build tension. This piece uses folk tunes from Czechoslovakia, where Dvořák was born and started writing, and includes a native American tune, and music from all the people like him who had travelled to live and work in the USA. Bringing these together, our concert ends with an explosion of joy!

Allegro, ma non tanto
Dumka. Andante con moto – Vivace – Andante con moto
Scherzo. Furiant – Molto vivace
Finale. Allegro 

Dvořák composed his great A major Piano Quintet in 1887 (a much earlier quintet from 1872 is in the same key) and it was described by Otakar Šourek as one of ‘the most delightful and successful works’ in the whole chamber music repertoire. From the spacious cello theme that opens the quintet, Dvořák shows the seemingly effortless spontaneity of a composer at the height of his powers. The second theme turns the mood more wistful, and the music oscillates between melancholy and warmth, culminating in a jubilant climax. The second movement is a Dumka, with slow outer sections based on a melancholy tune, and a quick central section derived from the same musical idea. The Scherzo – described by Dvořák as a Furiant – begins with one of his most enchanting quick melodies and this is followed by two more: an undulating tune and another of folk-like simplicity, before the opening idea returns. The central Trio provides an oasis – a tune in long notes over which Dvořák introduces fragments of the main theme. The opening melody of the Finale dominates much of what follows. Near the close, a brief fugal section leads to a moment of tranquillity before the final dash to the end.  

Nigel Simeone © 2014 

Allegro moderato
Largo
Scherzo. Presto – Trio. Poco meno mosso – Presto da capo
Allegro non tanto

Dvořák composed this Piano Trio in January 1876 at a time of great personal sadness: his daughter Josefa had died in infancy a few months earlier and the composer embarked on three works: this trio, the String Quartet in E major, and the Stabat mater, each of which can be considered a kind of memorial to Josefa. It was first performed on 29 June 1879 with Dvořák himself at the piano at a concert in the Bohemian town of Turnov. The mood of the trio is predominantly melancholic and tender, with a strong aura of nostalgia, but there is a clear national identity too.

A review in the Athenaeum following the first London performance in May 1880 expressed some reservations about Dvořák’s handling of form in the first movement, but praised ‘a succession of charmingly fresh and piquant ideas, more or less suggestive of the nationality of the composer. Some of the themes are so unmistakably Slavonic in character that Dvořák may possibly have culled them from the stores of folksongs ready to be utilized with effect in instrumental composition. Whether this be so or not, the entire trio, and especially the two middle movements, pleases on account of its thematic beauty and easy, unstudied expression.’

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In 1881, the Viennese violinist Joseph Hellmesberger asked Dvořák to write a new work for his quartet. In October, while working on the opera Dimitrij, Dvořák was alarmed to read an announcement in the Viennese press that the first performance of this quartet would be given on 15 December. He wrote to a friend on 5 November: ‘It still doesn’t exist! … I now have three movements prepared and am working on the finale.’ In fact, Dvořák had no reason to panic: he worked quickly and the C major quartet was written between 25 October and 10 November 1881. 

It has fewer overtly Slavonic elements than its immediate predecessor (the E flat Quartet, Op.51), and, perhaps in a nod to Hellmesberger’s commission, the main influences are from Viennese masters: Beethoven and, especially, Schubert. The spacious first movement transforms its two main themes with great ingenuity and harmonic imagination. The Adagio opens with a fervent theme presented as an intimate dialogue between the two violins; its second idea has what Dvořák’s biographer Otakar Šourek described as a ‘veiled expression of melancholy’. The influence of Beethoven is most apparent in the rather terse Scherzo while the falling theme of the central Trio provides a delightful contrast. The finale (a sonata-rondo) brings the work to a joyous conclusion, with Dvořák at his most inimitably Czech. 

After all the rush, Hellmesberger’s advertised December premiere in Vienna had to be cancelled due to a catastrophic fire at the Ringtheater, and the earliest known performance was given by Joseph Joachim’s quartet on 2 November 1882 in Berlin. 

© Nigel Simeone

Presto (furiant)
Allegretto scherzando (dumka)

It was Brahms who recommended his publisher Simrock to take on the Bohemian composer Antonín Dvořák, then in his thirties but largely unknown outside Prague. After the success of the Moravian Duets in 1878, Simrock immediately asked Dvořák for a set of Czech dances for piano four-hands as companion pieces to Brahms’s Hungarian Dances. Dvořák was delighted at the prospect and wrote them quickly between 18 March and 7 May 1878, producing a set of very stylised pieces drawing on the forms and characteristics of Czech folk dances. The Slavonic Dances immediately enjoyed huge success, and in 1886 Dvořák produced a second set. The first dance is a furious Presto in the style of a furiant (very fast, with syncopations and cross-rhythms). The second is the only one of the set for which the composer took inspiration from beyond Czech lands: its origins were a Ukrainian Dumka, a wistful lament which is intercut with livelier episodes.  

© Nigel Simeone 

Allegro ma non troppo
Lento
Molto vivace
Finale. Vivace ma non troppo

Dvořák was teaching in New York in 1893, and for his summer holiday he travelled over a thousand miles westwards, to the village of Spillville in Iowa, set in the valley of the Turkey River. It had been colonized by Czechs in the 1850s and in these congenial surroundings Dvořák quickly wrote the String Quartet in F major. On the last page of the manuscript draft, he wrote: ‘Finished on 10 June 1893, Spillville. I’m satisfied. Thanks be to God. It went quickly.’

Coming immediately after the ‘New World’ Symphony (which was to have its triumphant première in New York later in the year), the quartet has a mood that suggests something of his contentment in Spillville. Dvořák’s assistant Josef Kovařík recalled the composer’s routine: walks, composing, playing the organ for Mass and talking to locals, observing that he ‘scarcely ever talked about music and I think that was one of the reasons why he felt so happy there.’

Just how ‘American’ is the quartet? While remaining completely true to himself, Dvořák admitted that ‘as for my … F major String Quartet and the Quintet (composed here in Spillville) – I should never have written these works the way I did if I hadn’t seen America’. The first performance was given in Boston on New Year’s Day 1894 by the Kneisel Quartet.

© Nigel Simeone

Scored for the unusual combination of string quartet and double bass, Dvořák’s String Quintet in G major was first performed on 18 March 1876 as the composer’s Op.18 – a number that was changed when the work was first published by Simrock twelve years later in 1888. Originally the work had five movements (with an ‘Intermezzo’ before the Scherzo, reworked as the Nocturne in B major for string orchestra), and despite the published opus number, it is one of the composer’s first chamber works to be fully characteristic of his mature style. The first movement opens with a motif played first by the viola (Dvořák’s own instrument) that dominates much of the musical argument – the triplet figure in it is to be heard in the second theme too. The Scherzo finds Dvořák writing in the style of a folk dance, the opening theme consists of a lively opening motif that contrasts with a gentler idea over which Dvořák later introduces a warmly expressive new tune. The third movement has been described by the great Dvořák scholar Otakar Šourek as ‘one of the most entrancing slow movements in the whole of Dvořák’s chamber music … a flowing stream of passionate warmth [and] depth of feeling’. The finale has the same kind of sunny mood as the first movement, but with an even greater sense of joyful energy. Though there are moments of repose (during which the thematic material is treated to some ingenious transformations), the work ends with what Dvořák’s biographer Otakar Šourek aptly described as ‘high-spirited verve’.  

© Nigel Simeone 

Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) composed his String Quintet Op.97 in 1893, starting it a month after completing the New World Symphony. The two works share many of the same characteristics, including a fondness for melodies based on pentatonic (black-note) scales, syncopated rhythms, melodies inspired by Dvořák’s discovery of African-American spirituals and hints of the Native American music which he heard during his stay in Spillville, Iowa in Summer 1893. 

© Nigel Simeone