Smetana Music from The Bartered Bride The Two Widows • The Devil’s Wall Dalibor • Libuše • The Kiss • The Secret The Brandenburgers in Bohemia ORCHESTRAL WORKS, VOL. 2 BBC Philharmonic Gianandrea Noseda 24 CHAN 10518 Bedřich Smetana (1824 –1884) Orchestral Works, Volume 2 from ‘The Bartered Bride’ 20:21 (Prodaná nevěsta) © Lebrecht Music & Arts Photo Library 1 Overture 6:26 2 Polka (Act I Finale) 5:20 3 Furiant 2:18 4 Skocna (Dance of the Comedians) 6:05 5 Overture to ‘The Secret’ 6:31 (Tajemstvi) 6 Prelude to ‘Libuše’ 9:38 from ‘The Devil’s Wall’ 6:54 (Čertova stěna) 7 Prelude 4:06 8 Infernal Dance 2:43 Bedřich Smetana 3 Smetana: Orchestral Works, Volume 2 from ‘The Brandenburgers in Bohemia’ 3:08 While Smetana’s best-known independent the knight Oldrich frets about the sad fate (Braniboři v Čechách) orchestral work is the symphonic poem of his nation. The more extended first-act 9 Prelude 0:48 cycle My Country (Má vlast), there is a ballet centres on the Czech citizens of Prague wealth of orchestral music in his operas. celebrating their new-found freedom from 10 Act I Ballet 2:19 Even apart from the overtures and preludes, the German army. Marked by excitable cross- 11 Overture to ‘The Kiss’ 5:50 there are numerous dances of various kinds rhythms and impulsive, abrupt changes from (Hubička) to accommodate the enthusiasm of Czech minor to major, it effectively set the pattern audiences in the 1860s and 1870s for ballet in for the Slavonic manner in dance in Smetana’s 12 Entr’acte from ‘Dalibor’ 6:05 or out of the operatic context. later operas and orchestral works. Smetana’s first opera, The Brandenburgers The ballet from The Brandenburgers had ‘The Two Widows’ 13:14 from in Bohemia (Braniboři v Čechách), was another incarnation in Smetana’s second (Dvě vdovy) written in response to a competition to opera, The Bartered Bride (Prodaná nevěsta). 13 Overture 7:01 encourage the composition of operas for the Premiered just a few months after 14 Prelude to Act II 2:23 Prague Provisional Theatre (the precursor of The Brandenburgers, on 30 May 1866, 15 Polka from Act II 3:42 the magnificent National Theatre which now The Bartered Bride was not at first a success. TT 72:33 stands on the banks of the Vltava); it won the The ballet fromThe Brandenburgers, now prize. The premiere of The Brandenburgers, entitled ‘Gypsy ballet’, was drafted in at a on 5 January 1866, was a spectacular success later performance to liven up the action. In BBC Philharmonic and marked a significant upturn in Smetana’s two later revisions, made in 1869, Smetana Yuri Torchinsky leader career as a composer. Set in the thirteenth replaced the ‘Gypsy ballet’ with the familiar Gianandrea Noseda century, the plot revolves around the Skocna of Act III and also added the Polka to eventual emancipation of the Czechs from an the first act as a finale and the Furiant to the oppressive German army; its rabble-rousing drinking festivities at the start of Act II. This qualities appealed enormously to the native transformation of the two-act original with audience. The tense, compact Prelude pitches spoken dialogue to a more substantial three- the audience into the action of Act I in which act work with recitatives and ballets secured 5 4 for The Bartered Bride the enduring love of Smetana lavished some of his loveliest music composed: resounding fanfares (which look making, eventually reconciled. The Overture Czech audiences and a worldwide reputation on the score and always regretted that Dalibor forward to the introduction to Janáček’s is broadly conceived with an introduction for the opera. The Overture to the opera may never really captured the imagination of Glagolitic Mass) frame melodies associated based on a folksong used in the opera; a later have been completed some three years before Prague audiences in his lifetime. Typical with Libuše and her husband Premysl. episode includes music from the Polka which The Bartered Bride’s premiere: with its ear- of the lyricism which suffuses Dalibor is If any evidence of Smetana’s versatility concludes Act I. The Secret (Tajemstvi), catching pentatonic opening, scurrying string the second interlude from Act II which is a were needed, none is better than the contrast composed between 1877 and 1878, was figuration and uproarious syncopated melody, radiant accompaniment to what is, in effect, between Libuše and his next opera The Two the second of Kránsnohorská’s librettos for it is one of Smetana’s most immediately a pantomime in which Dalibor’s murdered Widows (Dvě vdovy). Having explored the Smetana. Another comedy, it tells the story, recognisable compositions. The three dances friend, the violinist Zdeněk, appears to him most noble sentiment in his ‘festival’ opera, rather like The Kiss, of the coming together share the Overture’s virtuosity. For all in a dream. Smetana turned, effectively, to opéra-comique of estranged lovers. The Overture begins in its portentous introduction, the Polka is Smetana’s fourth opera exists in a category with a libretto based on Mallefille’s comedy sombre fashion but this soon gives way to a marked by considerable melodic delicacy. The of its own. Libuše was designed from the Les Deux Veuves. The result was Smetana’s much lighter tone leading through extensive Furiant, with its bounding cross-rhythms, outset as a ‘festival’ opera reserved for solemn most sparkling comedy: completed in 1874, development to an exultant conclusion. is a much more robust dance and, unusually national events. In the first instance, the though later revised, its comic pacing was The Devil’s Wall (Čertova stěna), for Smetana, incorporates a reference to occasion for which it was intended was the admired by no less an authority than Richard completed in 1882, also used a libretto by a folksong in its main theme. TheSkocna , coronation of the Emperor Franz Josef as Strauss. The plot revolves around a successful Krásnohorská. (Smetana had intended to set or jumping dance, which accompanies the King of the Bohemians. Unfortunately, conspiracy by one rather carefree young Viola, her version of Twelfth Night, but only antics of the circus comedians in Act III, has Franz Josef refused the crown, causing widow to bring her cousin, also widowed, lived to compose a few fragments.) Billed as something of the character of a fast polka. In much consternation in Prague, and thus together with an eligible bachelor. Both a comic-romantic opera, The Devil’s Wall is addition to helping guarantee the success of Smetana was left with a major work and no the Overture and second-act Prelude rather different in style from The Kiss and The Bartered Bride, these three dances were occasion in immediate sight for a premiere. set the scene for the tongue-in-cheek The Secret. Its title refers to large rocks in hugely influential on later Czech composers, It was eventually given a triumphant first machinations of the plot while the the river Vltava at Vyšší Brod, which Czech not least Dvořák who played viola in the production at the opening of the National concluding, rather courtly, Polka adds a folklore holds were the result of an attempt by orchestra at their premiere. Theatre in 1881. The opera is the high- dash of national colouring. the devil to divert the river. Krásnohorská’s In April 1865, while orchestrating minded tale of the legendary medieval The Kiss (Hubička), completed in 1876, rather complicated plot is set in the thirteenth The Bartered Bride, Smetana began sketching prophetess Libuše, and culminates in a series was Smetana’s first collaboration with the century: a tale of two pairs of lovers, the his third opera, Dalibor. Ostensibly about of spectacular tableaux in which the glories, brilliant young librettist and poet, Eliška climax of the drama comes with the damning a medieval dispute which results in a tragic vicissitudes and ultimate triumphs of the Krásnohorská. The most lyrical of Smetana’s of the river, but a happy end is achieved when love story, the opera is really a celebration Czech people are foretold. The magnificent comedies, it is the story of two stubborn lovers the hermit Benes destroys the damn with the of music and the musicality of the Czechs. Prelude is the stateliest work Smetana ever who are, after many vicissitudes of their own sign of the cross and the lovers are united. The 6 7 short Prelude to the opera is based on themes 1980 – 91) is Conductor Emeritus. The the Tokyo and NHK Symphony orchestras, With the BBC Philharmonic he has toured from the work with the devil’s motif emerging BBC Philharmonic has worked with many the Orchestre du Capitol de Toulouse and extensively in Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, in the bassoon shortly after the atmospheric distinguished conductors and its policy Orchestre national de France. During the Hungary, and the Czech and Slovak republics; opening bars. The ‘Infernal Dance’ in Act III of introducing new and adventurous 2006/07 season he made his debut with after a successful first tour they returned to is the accompaniment to what is effectively a repertoire into its programmes has meant the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester in Japan in 2008. Their live performances of conjuration scene in which the devil, Rarach, that many of the world’s greatest composers Berlin, the Filarmonica della Scala and Israel Beethoven’s complete symphonies from the calls up various hellish denizens to build have conducted the orchestra. In 1991 Sir Philharmonic Orchestra. His relationship Bridgewater Hall, Manchester have attracted the damn. Notwithstanding slight debts to Peter Maxwell Davies became the BBC with The Metropolitan Opera began in 2002 1.4 million download requests.