Smetana Ma vlast (My Fatherland) No. 2. Vltava (Moldau) Conductor: Rafael Kubelík Czech 1990

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Má vlast (traditionally translated as My Country or more literally My Fatherland) is a set of six symphonic poems composed between 1874 and 1879 by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana. While it is often presented as a single work in six movements, and outside of Vltava almost universally recorded that way, the individual pieces were conceived as a set of individual works.

In these works Smetana combined the symphonic poem form pioneered by Franz Liszt with the ideals of nationalistic music which were current in the late nineteenth century. Each poem depicts some aspect of the countryside, history, or legends of Bohemia.

Vltava, also known by its German name Die Moldau (or The Moldau), was composed between 20 November and 8 December 1874 and was premiered on 4 April 1875. It is about 12 minutes long, and is in the key of E minor.

In this piece, Smetana uses tone painting to evoke the sounds of one of Bohemia's great rivers. In his own words:

The composition describes the course of the Vltava, starting from the two small springs, the Cold and Warm Vltava, to the unification of both streams into a single current, the course of the Vltava 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 toward Prague, past the Vyšehrad, and then majestically vanishes into the distance, ending at the Labe (or Elbe, in German).

BACKGROUND HISTORY

Vltava (Moldau)
The two sources of the Moldau – Woods; Hunt – Peasant wedding – Moonlight; Nymphs’ round–dance – Rapids of St. John – The Moldau flows broadly onwards; Vysehrad.

Bedrich Smetana is a heroic figure in Czech culture, and even today is accorded higher public esteem in his own country than better-known composers such as Dvorák.

The son of a Bohemian brewer, he is seen as the founder of a Czech national school of music; such operas as "Libuse" and "The Bartered Bride" are staples of the Czech repertoire and his cycle of symphonic poems Má Vlast (My Country) is performed annually at the Prague Spring, the great national cultural festival.

But it takes away nothing of Smetana’s significance in his own country to point out that his major works, and particularly Má Vlast, are remarkable and very original achievements in their own right.

Nationalism is not everything in Smetana’s music – he was brought up speaking German and is not known to have written a word of Czech before the age of 32. In the polyglot Austrian Empire of which the modern Czech Republic was a part until 1918,
a background of this sort was perfectly consistent with a passionate Czech patriotism.

Likewise, Má Vlast is an unquestionably patriotic work, but it uses the common musical language of the Central European tradition (with a particular debt to Smetana’s friend Liszt) and does so in a remarkably innovative way.

The idea of composing an 80-minute suite of symphonic poems was wholly new when Smetana began Má Vlast in 1872, and the six individual works that make up the cycle all deal successfully with the problem – then one of the hottest subjects of musical controversy – of writing programmatic music with true symphonic integrity.

Vltava (1874) is the second symphonic poem in Má Vlast, and portrays the river, called the Moldau by German-speaking Czechs such as Smetana, which rises in the _umava forest and flows through the Bohemian countryside and the city of Prague before joining the River Elbe.

For Smetana, the course of the river provided a ready-made musical structure;
Vltava is a sort of rondo, with the flowing theme of the river recurring in different forms between colourful episodes depicting Bohemian life and folklore along the riverside.

Two brooks, portrayed on two flutes, form the sources of the river; these flow into the main stream of the river itself, the surging string melody which Smetana is said to have derived from a Swedish folk-song but which now sounds quintessentially Czech.

Hunting horns are heard in the forests, before the river flows past a rustic wedding celebration where the guests are dancing a polka. Smetana led the way (here and in his String Quartet "From my Life") in introducing this light-hearted dance to symphonic music.

The next episode portrays moonlight shimmering on the river in magical orchestral colours, and Smetana evokes the legend of the Rusalkas, the water-nymphs who feature prominently in Slav folklore and would later form the subject of Dvorák’s best-known opera.

The music accelerates and grows agitated as the river crashes over the Rapids of St. John, above Prague, and finally sweeps through the Czech capital itself. The majestic chorale-theme of Vysehrad, the great rock-fortress that is the symbol of the Czech nation, towers over the closing bars, as the Vltava flows unstoppably onwards to the Elbe.




Smetana - Ma Vlast (Moldau) Vltava

Rafael Kubelik - Czech Philharmonic Orchestra

1990 Prague's Spring



 
This is a once-in-a-lifetime dream recording of Smetana's Moldau. Rafael Kubelik conducting the Czech Philharmonic filmed in video in an outdoor concert at the Old Town Square in Prague, few months after the Velvet Revolution! A truly priceless record of one of the 20th century's greatest conductors.







*classicalnotes.co.uk*