Bedrich Smetana - My Country (Arrangement for Piano 4 Hands)

Bedrich SMETANA (1824 - 1884)

My Country/ Ma Vlast

Original arrengenment for piano for four hands

by the composer

Peter Jirikovsky & Daniel Wiesner (Piano)

The most widely popular symphonic work of Czech Romantic music literature - the cycle of tone poems, My Country, by Bedrich Smetana (1824 - 1884) - was shortly after the completion of its full orchestral version arranged also for piano duet. The piano reduction, from the pen of the composer himself, attests to his own idea of the functional hierarchy in an orchestral score. To be sure, My Country is the work of a composer who was no longer in sensory auditive control of his nascent music. As an active pianist, Smetana was closely acquainted with the various technical devices and potentialities of piano stylization; consequently, the outcome of his transcription of the orchestral version into piano texture represents a remarkable feat in terms of sheer musical imagination. Indeed, Smetana succeeded in turning his piano reductions of the individual tone poems here to ideal vehicles of his intention which was to popularize the larger work, at the same time creating a series of virtuoso pieces entitled to autonomous existence on the concert platform.

Tracks

1-Vysehrad

2-Vltava

3-Sarka

4-Z ceskych luhu ahu

5-Tabor

6-Blanik