It was in the autumn of 1877 that a 36 year-old Antonin Dvořák included his “Moravian Duets” with his application for an Austrian State grant for “young, talented and poor artists.” Still little known outside of his native Bohemia, Dvořák caught the interest of Johannes Brahms, who sat on the board of adjudication. Recognizing the younger man’s talent, Brahms recommended Dvořák to his German publisher, Fritz Simrock.
Simrock’s edition of Dvořák’s duets proved to be so popular that it went into a second printing. (Even so, he did not pay the composer!) When that sold out, he requested that Dvořák write something akin to Brahms’ wildly successful “Hungarian Dances.” The resultant “Slavonic Dances” cemented Dvořák’s international fame.
On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” Dvořák pays his dues, with two early works that reveal his genius in utero.
The Piano Quartet No. 1 in D major, Op. 23, was composed over a span of just eighteen days during the summer of 1875. Dvořák was 33 and probably already at work on the “Moravian Duets.”
Though a product of his early maturity, Dvořák’s quartet is already imbued with the composer’s soon-to-be familiar “Czech national sound.” Not nearly as well known as the “American” String Quintet or the Piano Quintet in A major, it is nevertheless unmistakably from the same pen, with no shortage of memorable melodies and brimming with his indelible charm. The work didn’t hit print until 1880 (around the time of the second run of the “Moravian Duets”). Tellingly, it was not published by Simrock, but rather by Schlesinger, a Berlin rival.
We’ll hear it performed at the 1969 Marlboro Music Festival by pianist and Marlboro co-founder Rudolf Serkin, violinist Shmuel Ashkenasi, violist Martha Strongin Katz, and cellist Robert Sylvester.
The “Moravian Duets” grew out of songs Dvořák wrote specifically for domestic performance by a wealthy merchant and his wife, who also happened to be amateur singers. At the merchant’s request, Dvořák began by arranging Moravian national songs, but quickly segued into providing wholly original music for the traditional folk texts.
Delighted with the results, the merchant paid for the duets’ first printing in Prague, prior to Christmas 1876. Further songs followed. The complete cycle of 23, for two voices and piano accompaniment, appeared as three separate sets, assigned to different vocal ranges, between 1875 and 1881.
We’ll round out the hour with the four songs of the first of these, collected under Op. 20, in its final form, performed in Czech by soprano Mary Burgess and tenor John Humphrey, with pianist Luis Batlle – a commercial recording made for Columbia Masterworks as an offshoot of the 1966 Marlboro Music Festival.
One of the advantages of being a “provincial” composer is that Dvorak was already a master by the time he was discovered. Discover these works from his early maturity on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
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