Bedrich Smetana - Czech Dances & On the seashore

Bedřich SMETANA (1824-1884)

Czech Dances & On the seashore

České tance I 'Czech Dances' JB 1:107

České tance II 'Czech Dances' JB 1:114

Na břehu mořském – Vzpomínka 'On the seashore – A reminiscence' JB 1:80

Garrick Ohlsson (piano)

Recorded January 2015, Henry Wood Hall, London, United Kingdom

On 3 April 1841, Bedřich Smetana, who had just turned seventeen, wrote a list of his compositions, excluding his ‘childish efforts’. Among the works he mentioned are two polkas for string quartet and several solo piano pieces, including the Louisina Polka: ‘Polka for Louise, for piano. Written in Nové Město. Without flattery to myself I can say that this polka has hardly its equal. Each bar of it is charming and lovely, and all those in Plzenv who have heard it cannot praise it enough or hear it often enough. I am unable to play any of the pieces I have written up to now repeatedly, because I get sick of them, but I can play this polka over and over again and I never tire of it.’

In 1840, the year in which Smetana composed this early polka, it was still a new dance form. With its origins in the Bohemian countryside, this dance in duple time, usually in a quick tempo, had first appeared in Prague ballrooms in the mid-1830s. A craze for the dance developed in the 1840s (in Paris it was inspired by the visit of a Czech dancing master in 1840), and it was quickly taken up by Viennese composers such as Joseph Lanner and Johann Strauss I.

For Smetana, the polka always held a special place, and reinventing the form became a lifelong enthusiasm. Four decades after his Louisina Polka, Smetana wrote to his publisher Urbánek on 2 March 1879 about his latest piano pieces: ‘I should not like the title “Polkas” to be changed to the general term “Dances”! My title, “Polkas”, is important, for my efforts are directed towards idealizing the polka in particular, as Chopin did with the mazurka. These polkas are a continuation of those published years ago in four books. Whoever knows them will be able to judge the progress made in this genre. I would ask that the title “Polkas” be kept.’

Smetana didn’t quite get his way, but at least ‘polkas’ were mentioned in the subtitle: in August 1879, Urbánek announced the publication of Smetana’s Czech Dances: Four Polkas for piano. They were completed in 1877 while the composer was staying at the home of his friend Josef Jiránek in Prague. Jiránek, a distinguished pianist and composer, recalled that ‘it was in 1877, when in my room, at my writing desk, he wrote four polkas which [two] years later were published … as part of the Czech Dances. He wrote the manuscript in ink right away and then played them on the piano.’ Smetana had in fact started to sketch the dances a few weeks’ earlier, at Jabkenice in April 1877, before setting off for Prague.

For Smetana, performing music had become a poignant experience by this time. Though he had made considerable efforts to revive his piano technique in the early 1870s, his health was deteriorating alarmingly. From 1874—in the midst of composing the tone poems that became Má vlast—he began to lose his hearing, and by 1876 he was completely deaf. In January 1877, he wrote to his friend and pupil Charlotte Valentin in Gothenburg, telling her about the recent triumph of his opera The Kiss (Hubička): ‘I am deaf, and shall probably remain so for ever. No treatment, no doctors have helped … I have been called the founder of national music and all kinds of distinctions have been conferred on me. Unfortunately I was the only one in the packed house who did not hear a single note of the music, my own music into the bargain!’

The four polkas published as Czech Dances in 1879 demonstrate how serious Smetana was about ‘idealizing the polka’, in a way that parallels Chopin’s treatment of the mazurka. There’s a strong sense of exploring every possibility of the form in order to create concert works that nonetheless remain true to the spirit of their folk-dance origins. The first polka, marked Non molto allegro, begins with a theme in running semiquavers that seems reluctant to settle in a key until the final cadence of the first section, which establishes F sharp minor. The central section, in D major, is underpinned by an accompaniment derived from the semiquaver theme, but with an alluring chordal melody over the top. After a return to the opening, a short coda reintroduces the D major theme, then shifts unobtrusively into F sharp major, the key in which the piece ends.

The second polka, marked Moderato, begins in A minor and is based almost entirely on a rhythmic figure that is one of the most familiar polka fingerprints: two semiquavers followed by a quaver. Smetana takes this motif as the starting point for all the thematic material in the piece, including the central section in C major. Overlaid on the top are several delicate virtuoso passages of rapid decoration, before the music subsides to a quiet close in the home key, the persistent rhythm present to the end.

The third polka is completely different in mood, and it is a sign of Smetana’s inventiveness that the same rhythm that dominated the second polka is used to create such a sharply contrasted piece. Based in F major (with a central section in D flat major), this begins as an archetypal polka: lively, genial and in duple time; but from this ostensibly simple start, Smetana develops these ideas into a dazzling étude.

The final polka is perhaps the most unusual of the four. Marked Lento, it begins with a broad, wistful theme in sixths. The contrasting section is based on the same material, treated quite differently: faster, and agitated. The set closes with a return to the opening, and a mood of gentle nostalgia.

Having composed these extremely creative reinventions of the polka, the second set of Czech Dances explores other traditional Bohemian dances, inspired by Smetana’s younger contemporary Dvořák, whose first set of Slavonic Dances was published in 1878 for piano four-hands. From 1876 until his death in 1884, Smetana’s permanent home was at Jabkenice, sixty kilometres north-east of Prague, near Mladá Boleslav, where his son-in-law Josef Schwarz was a forester. The setting was idyllic—surrounded by woodland and lakes—and Smetana lived in the gamekeeper’s lodge. Living in the cottage opposite Smetana’s lodge was a long-retired teacher called Suchý. Smetana visited him to learn more about the old Bohemian and Moravian dances. Suchý, an amateur violinist, turned out to be a valuable source for the composer. As Smetana’s son-in-law recalled: ‘We were not surprised that Suchý had scribbled down the various dances on paper, but we were surprised to hear, and we would gladly have witnessed it, how the old man, his violin under his chin and playing the tunes from the scribbles on the paper handed to Smetana, had shown him the steps and turns of all the dances.’ Several of these tunes were to find their way into the second set of Czech Dances which Smetana worked on in 1879, while others were drawn from Prostonárodní české písně a říkadla s přílohou nápěvů, the collection of Czech songs compiled by Karel Jaromír Erben, published in 1862–4. 

from Hyperion Web Site