Josef Suk (1874-1935) was the one-time pupil and eventual son-in-law of Antonin Dvořák. In fact, his early works very much reflect Dvořák’s influence, sunny, romantic music full of nationalistic touches.
However, a double tragedy occurred in Suk’s 30th year. In 1905, he lost both his father-in-law and his beloved wife – Dvořák’s elder daughter – Otilie. The events directly inspired Suk’s “Asrael Symphony,” named for the Angel of Death. Not surprisingly, morbidity colors much of his mature output.
Today marks the 150th anniversary of Suk’s birth. Here are some samples of Suk, pre- and post-happiness.
Serenade for Strings (1892)
“Asrael Symphony” (1905-06)
And a personal favorite, “Pohádka,” or “Fairy Tale” (1897-98). Suk arranged the suite from incidental music he composed for a play called “Radúz and Mahulena,” in which true love conquers all. The work took on special significance for the composer, since it was the period in which he was secretly in love with his teacher’s daughter and feared the day of reckoning, when all would be revealed. He needn’t have worried, of course. Dvořák was delighted. Alas, Suk’s happiness was to be short-lived.
One of Antonín Dvořák’s great joys – when he wasn’t busy trainspotting, that is – was keeping pigeons.
At his summer home in Vysoká, he was pretty relaxed about providing free room and board to whatever winged companion would follow him home. And while he was away, he kept up a correspondence with a local miner to whom he entrusted care of the property. This included the house, the garden, and of course the pigeons. Dvořák’s letters were full of meticulous instructions as to how best to keep his little friends healthy and contented.
Word got out about Dvořák’s enthusiasm. At a concert in England, his wife was asked by a member of the royal family what types of things Dvořák really enjoyed. This resulted in the surprise delivery, back at home, of six braces of English pigeons!
In 1896, Dvořák wrote a series of symphonic poems inspired by the grim fairy tales of Karel Jaromir Erben. These include “The Water Goblin,” “The Noon Witch,” and “The Golden Spinning Wheel.” His opera, “Rusalka,” written a few years later, also bears Erben’s influence.
I imagine his fondness for Columbidae would have made it difficult to pass up “The Wood Dove” (also translated as “The Wild Dove”). The story, from Erben’s collection of poetic ballads, “Kytice,” tells of a woman who poisons her husband and marries another man. Day after day, a dove perches on the husband’s grave and sings a mournful song, until the wife, overcome with guilt, commits suicide by hurling herself into a river.
The premiere of Dvořák’s symphonic poem was given in Brno, on March 20, 1898, under the baton of Leoš Janáček.
Hard to believe that the composer of the Serenade for Strings and the sunny Symphony No. 8 could write these lurid potboilers after Czech fairy tales, and that he could find so much depth and melancholy in simple children’s stories.
Harry T. Burleigh is one of the great unsung figures in American music – which is ironic, since it was his singing that changed the course of history.
Burleigh was a student at the National Conservatory of Music in New York, where he studied with, among others, Rubin Goldmark, the conservative pedagogue who later gave lessons to Aaron Copland and George Gershwin.
It just so happens that Burleigh’s attendance there coincided with the tenure of Antonin Dvořák as the conservatory’s director. Dvořák overheard the young man singing African American spirituals in a corridor adjacent to his office and was transfixed. This was his first exposure to the spiritual, and it had the force of an epiphany. Thereafter, Burleigh was a regular guest at the Dvořák home. He frequently sang for Dvořák and worked as his copyist beginning in 1893.
Reflecting on his own debt to the folk idioms of his native land in the development of a Czech national sound, Dvořák was eager to share his impressions with American composers, and to encourage them to embrace this unique and neglected resource.
“I am now satisfied that the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called Negro melodies,” he wrote. “This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States. When I first came here last year I was impressed with this idea and it has developed into a settled conviction. These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are American.”
This was quite the pronouncement for 1893.
Spirituals, of course, became an important part of the “New World” Symphony’s DNA. Since Dvořák’s masterwork was intended, in part, as instructional, leading American composers by example to a distinctly national sound, the significance of Burleigh’s influence becomes inescapable.
Burleigh also served as a double-bassist and timpanist in the school’s orchestra, which Dvořák conducted. He was born in Stamford, CT, on this date in 1866.
Genial, esteemed, self-effacing and beloved – the conductor Libor Pešek has died.
Pešek was a regular presence on the podiums of his native land for some 70 years and did much to promote Czech music abroad.
In particular, he was instrumental in raising the awareness of the works of Josef Suk outside the Czech Republic, especially the wounded, even morbid scores of the composer’s maturity.
Suk, the pupil and son-in-law of Antonín Dvořák, lost both his mentor and his young wife, Otylie (Dvořák’s daughter), at the age of 30. Already, when Suk was a young man, Dvořák detected a melancholy strain in his music and set him the challenge of writing something sunny. The result was Suk’s Serenade for Strings, which became one of the composer’s most frequently performed works.
Suk could do Czech nationalism with the best of them, but as he entered his prime, his works became as gloomily introspective as anything by Gustav Mahler, without the ecstatic peaks. Pešek’s recording of the “Asrael Symphony” (which takes its name from the Angel of Death) did much to increase the work’s international reputation. It was a piece he performed not only in Liverpool, where he was music director, but also took with him (much to the chagrin of tour agents) to Spain and the United States.
Pešek, who studied with conductors Václav Smetáček and Karel Ančerl, began his professional career in the opera houses of Plzeň and Prague. He founded the Prague Chamber Harmony in 1958.
As his stature grew, he assumed posts with the Slovak Philharmonic (1981-82), the Czech Philharmonic (1982-90), the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (1987-98), and the Czech National Symphony Orchestra (2007-19).
Pešek stepped down in Liverpool over budgetary difficulties, but continued to work with the orchestra in the capacity of laureate conductor for the next quarter century. Liverpool came to be regarded as “the best Czech orchestra this side of Prague.”
Among his many honors, he was made Knight Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. He retired from the podium at the age of 85. Most of his recordings were issued on the Supraphon and Virgin Classics labels.
Happily, he also appears to have been an amiable person, both professionally and personally, refreshingly lacking in ego and able to enjoy relaxed times with musicians, family, friends, and animals.
At the time of his death, Pešek was 89 years-old. R.I.P.
Pešek’s recording of Suk’s “Asrael Symphony” (with appropriately Halloweeny cover):
And a score from Suk’s happier days, “Pohádka,” or “Fairy Tale.” He arranged it from music he composed for a play called “Radúz and Mahulena,” in which true love conquers all. The work took on special significance for the composer, since he happened to be secretly in love with his teacher’s daughter and feared the day of reckoning, when all would be revealed. He needn’t have worried. Dvořák was delighted. Sadly, Suk’s happiness was to be short-lived.
Pešek also championed the music of Vítězslav Novák, another Dvořák pupil (and Suk’s classmate at the Prague Conservatory). See what you think of the “Slovak Suite.”
Also, Novák’s tone poem “Toman and the Wood Nymph,” in which a youth is seduced by an alluring dryad on St. John’s Eve:
Pešek certainly knew his way around the symphonies of Dvořák, if not always quite scaling the heights of the composer’s grandeur. I find he was often more satisfying in the “filler” material, as it were, and works like Dvořák’s lesser-known “American Suite.”
You don’t often encounter Dvořák’s earlier symphonies (i.e. those before No. 7), either in the concert hall or on the radio. I’ve always been partial to Pešek’s recording of No. 3. Here, the movements are posted separately (probably with ads in between). If you like it, you can let the feed run directly into No. 4.
Josef Suk’s 30th year was a tragic one, marked by the deaths of both his young wife, Otilie, and her father, his former teacher, Antonín Dvořák. Not surprisingly, a sense of morbidity colors much of his mature output. The double-loss directly inspired Suk’s “Asrael Symphony,” named for the Angel of Death.
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll take a look at “A Summer’s Tale,” the next step in Suk’s emotional rehabilitation. The work is a five-movement symphonic poem, the second of a four-part cycle that contemplates death and the meaning of life. More affirmative than the grim “Asrael,” which is full of pain, loss, and grief, “A Summer’s Tale” explores the healing powers of nature, in a score that at times reflects the epic romanticism of Gustav Mahler and at others the impressionism of Claude Debussy. It was composed over the course of just six weeks in the summer of 1907. Further tinkering took place over the next year-and-a-half. The work received its premiere in January of 1909.
Suk later described the theme of the piece as “finding a soothing balm in nature.” I hope you’ll join me as we clear a path to “Healing by Nature” – Josef Suk’s “A Summer’s Tale” – this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
