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Friday Evening, February 10, 2017, at 8:00 Isaac Stern Auditorium / Ronald O. Perelman Stage Conductor’s Notes Q&A with Leon Botstein at 7:00 presents Prague Central: Great 20th Century Czech Composers LEON BOTSTEIN, Conductor VÍTEˇ ZSLAV NOVÁK In the Tatras, Op. 26 BOHUSLAV MARTINU˚ Symphony No. 3 Allegro poco moderato Largo Allegro—Andante Intermission JOSEF SUK Scherzo fantastique, Op. 25 ERWIN SCHULHOFF Symphony No. 5 Andante, ma molto risoluto Adagio Allegro con brio Allegro con brio—Allegro moderato This evening’s concert will run approximately 2 hours and 20 minutes including one 20-minute intermission. American Symphony Orchestra welcomes the many organizations who participate in our Community Access Program, which provides free and low-cost tickets to underserved groups in New York’s five boroughs. For information on how you can support this program, please call (212) 868-9276. PLEASE SWITCH OFF YOUR CELL PHONES AND OTHER ELECTRONIC DEVICES. ASO THIS SEASON AT CARNEGIE HALL Fri, May 12, 2017 The Apostles with the Bard Festival Chorale England’s greatest composer after Purcell wrote a magnificent but rarely-heard setting of the New Testament. Elgar’s The Apostles follows the story of the Twelve through the Resurrection, and is at once sublime and heartbreakingly human. Edward Elgar – The Apostles FROM THE Music Director AFTER DVORˇ ÁK AND SMETANA: CZECH MUSIC IN THE 20TH CENTURY By Leon Botstein The four composers on this ASO program Indeed, from the Baroque era on, music were major twentieth-century figures in was a distinctive component of Bohemian the musical tradition of a region in and Moravian life. In the mid-19th centu- Central Europe: the Czech lands of ry, two Czech composers rose to interna- Bohemia and Moravia, famed for contri- tional fame: Antonín Dvorˇák and Bedrˇich butions to European culture, particularly Smetana. Dvorˇák’s career was assisted by in music. The historic capital of Bohemia, support from Vienna through the advoca- Prague is now the capital of the Czech cy of Brahms. Smetana—who wrote both Republic. Before this, it was the capital of the first famous Czech national opera, a nation spliced together after the end of The Bartered Bride, and the best-known World War I—Czechoslovakia—which national cycle of tone poems, Má Vlast— existed from 1918 until the fall of the was ironically far more comfortable in Soviet Empire just over a quarter of a cen- German than in the Czech language, and tury ago, when it was divided into the he spent an important part of his career Czech Republic and Slovakia. in Sweden. Prior to 1918, both major regions of But despite their affiliation with German today’s Czech Republic—Bohemia and culture, both composers became associ- Moravia—had been part of the Habsburg ated with a burgeoning Czech national- Empire. The historic center of gravity in ism that blossomed after the Habsburg that dynastic and much maligned multi- defeat at the hand of the Prussians in national Empire was Vienna. Already in 1866. Once the Habsburg Empire began the 18th century these regions were cen- to crumble, a Prussian-dominated ters of German (not Czech) high culture. German nation was configured which Mozart’s Don Giovanni was premiered in excluded the Habsburg lands, in which Prague. Franz Kafka is perhaps the best- German was spoken, particularly known figure from the vital German- Austria and the lands where these com- speaking Jewish community of Prague posers were born. Although they were into which Erwin Schulhoff was born. citizens of the same empire as the Germans and Austrians, Dvorˇák and His achievements can be rightly compared Smetana came to be seen as Czech to those of his Czech-Jewish German- nationalists. speaking contemporaries in other fields: Kafka and the writers Egon Erwin Kisch It is ironic in the context of the current and Max Brod (who played a decisive role revival of extreme nationalism in Central in bringing the great original Moravian- and Eastern Europe and the fragility of Czech composer of the previous genera- the European Union that, in retrospect, tion, Leos Janácˇek, to international atten- the multi-national Habsburg Empire may tion during the interwar years). But have been a far more promising frame- Schulhoff is now mostly remembered as a work than once thought for the expres- victim of the Nazis, and not the major sion of disparate linguistic and cultural European composer he was. autonomy within a tolerant, pluralist gov- erning political structure. But in the late This concert offers the public an opportu- 19th century the Empire, which was cen- nity to sample the achievements of the tered in Vienna (and after 1867 in music that emerged from a tumultuous Budapest), was seen as archaic and era of political change. The post- oppressive. Habsburg development of nationalism, democracy, fascism, anti-Semitism, and In turn-of-the-century and early twenti- socialism all collided in the twenty years eth-century Czech musical life, opposing of Czechoslovakia after 1918. In 1938, camps emerged: one centered around democratic Czechoslovakia was dismem- Smetana (viewed to be the more radical bered by the Nazis; after 1945 it fell with- nationalist voice) and one around Dvorˇák in the Soviet Empire. (a figure seen as more loyal, politically, to the Habsburg model). Two of the com- However, the composers on this program posers on this program were students of all represented a sense of nationalism Dvorˇák: Josef Suk (his son-in-law) and compatible with a vital cosmopolitan cul- Víteˇzslav Novák. Like Dvorˇák, on whose ture, both Czech and German. Their music both Brahms and Wagner exerted remarkable output is a welcome reminder influence, Suk and Novák were acutely of the urgent need for an alternative to the aware of their leading German-speaking narrow xenophobic and provincial contemporaries, Richard Strauss and nationalisms that have, in recent years, Gustav Mahler (who was born in reasserted their allure and power— Moravia). In the cross currents of political nationalisms that are unlikely to offer the ferment in the late nineteenth and early multi-faceted sources of inspiration that twentieth centuries, Prague became more Suk, Novák, Martinu° , and Schulhoff drew than a place in which national sentiment upon. flourished; it became a major center of modernist innovation in literature, art, On a personal note, I would like to dedi- and music. cate this concert to the memory of Rudolf Firkušný (1912–94), the consummate Bohuslav Martinu° (who spent a great deal musician and phenomenal pianist, student of his career in Paris and the United of Janácˇek’s, and ardent partisan of the States) was a Czech patriot who felt the democratic Czechoslovakia in which he trials of exile keenly. He was brilliant and grew up. It was through Firkušný, a close prolific and more of his music deserves to friend of Martinu° ’s , that I first became be heard. Schulhoff, who began as an acquainted with the music of the com- experimental modernist in the Kafka posers on this program, particularly the mold, eventually turned to communism. works of Suk and Novák. THE Program Víteˇzslav Novák Born December 5, 1870, in Kamenice nad Lipou, Southern Bohemia Died July 18, 1949, in Skutecˇ, Czech Republic In the Tatras, Op. 26 Composed in 1902 Premiered on November 25, 1902 in Prague by the Czech Philharmonic conducted by Oskar Nedbal Performance Time: Approximately 25 minutes Instruments for this performance: 2 flutes, 1 piccolo, 2 oboes, 1 English horn, 2 clarinets, 1 bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 1 contrabassoon, 4 French horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, 1 tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, snare drum, suspended cymbal, crash cymbals, glockenspiel), 1 harp, 18 violins, 6 violas, 6 cellos, 5 double basses Víteˇzslav Novák was a gifted and prolific Antartica, combines several prototypes or composer who was at the core of Czech “topics.” First, the music conjures up musical life in the first decades of the 20th images of the sublime: a vast, jagged, and century. Composing in virtually every open space which dwarfs a human scale genre, he has been claimed by both mod- and produces wonder and terror. This is ernists and neo-romantics as a founding readily apparent in Novák’s opening figure. He was also at the very center of an theme with its unison ascent followed by ongoing series of artistic feuds about the a leap. Second, it involves music of strug- direction of Czech music, which were a fea- gle, since such works not only seek to ture of musical life at the time. suggest the appearance and nature of In a forthcoming article about the com- mountains, but also engage the relation- poser, Lenka Krupková refers to his ship of human beings to them. Finally, “South Moravian” Suite as a kind of climbing mountains is not only a matter “ethnotourism,” noting that unlike of engaging the physical challenges of the Janácˇek, Novák had little primary experi- peak itself, but the kind of weather often ence with folk culture. Thus according to encountered by mountaineers reaching her, his lovely work is a classic example of toward high summits. So we also have a a composition by an outsider. Not so with range of sounds throughout conjuring the In the Tatras! Novák was deeply familiar music of cold, a kind of vocabulary devel- with the mountains and had scaled them oped over the centuries, from Purcell as a kind of expert climber (he carped through Vivaldi and from Janácˇek’s that Strauss’ Alpine Symphony was com- “Voice of the Steppe” in House of the posed from an armchair, and, in fact, three years after composing In the Tatras Dead to a broad range of cinematic he was almost killed in a dangerous fall effects associated with icy weather, such while climbing them).