Ravinia 2023 Issue 1

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841–1904) Romantic Pieces , B. 150 (op. 75) Dvořák returned to Prague in 1887 after a successful stay in England featuring numer- ous performances of his music. English audi- ences particularly enjoyed the choral works, including the dramatic cantata The Spectre’s Bride , the oratorio St. Ludmila , and his glori- ous Stabat mater setting. Back home, his com- positions followed a less grandiose path, em- phasizing chamber-ensemble works for small groups of friends. He first devised a string trio of two violins and viola, the so-called Ter- zetto , op. 74. Dvořák intended this piece spe- cifically for the amateur violinist Josef Kruis, a chemistry student who boarded in his home, and Kruis’s violin teacher, Jan Pelikán. The composer created the viola part for himself. Unfortunately, Kruis could not manage the technical demands, and Dvořák was forced to compose a simpler work for his friends—a set of four miniatures. Within two weeks, he re- arranged these works for violin and piano and renamed the set Romantic Pieces . The first performance took place on March 30 with Dvořák playing the piano and Karel Ondříček appearing as violinist. The Romantic Pieces were published that same year as op. 75. The four Romantic Pieces employ tempo mark- ings only. Allegro moderato is a song-like piece in B-flat major. Dvorák emulated the spirit of Czech fiddle music in the D-minor Allegro maestoso . Lyrical expression returns in the B-flat-major Allegro appassionato . The Lar- ghetto in Gminor is a melancholy composition based on a somewhat fragmented melodic line. ERWIN SCHULHOFF (1894–1942) Suite for Violin and Piano, op. 1 The Czech-born composer and pianist Erwin Schulhoff received early musical encourage- ment from Antonín Dvořák. On his advice, the 10-year-old Erwin entered the Prague Conservatory. He later studied in Vienna, in Leipzig with Max Reger, and in Cologne. Oth- er important musical influences of his youth Antonín Dvořák included Richard Strauss, Claude Debussy (with whom Schulhoff allegedly took private lessons in Paris), and members of the modern Russian school: Mily Balakirev, Anatoly Li- adov, and Alexander Scriabin. At age 17, Schul- hoff won Leipzig’s Mendelssohn Prize for pia- no and, five years later, for composition. Four years of military service during World War I changed the direction of Schulhoff’s life. Action on the Russian and Italian fronts did not prevent Schulhoff from composing, even as he battled to save his hands from frostbite in Russia. He emerged from combat with a sizeable body of new works. After the war, he remained in Germany, cultivated an associa- tion with the avant-garde Dadaist movement, and became heavily influenced by jazz. Ar- nold Schoenberg’s expressionist techniques and the neoclassical idiom of Igor Stravinsky also informed his broadening, eclectic style. Schulhoff returned to Prague in 1923 to teach private piano lessons, instrumentation, and score-reading at the conservatory. His com- positions during this period display the growing influence of Czech folk music. He also found a direct source of inspiration in fellow countryman Leoš Janáček. Schulhoff knew several of Janáček’s works, in particular the opera Jenůfa following his engagement as répétiteur for a 1918 performance in Cologne. Six years later, he published an article in An- bruch commemorating Janáček’s 70th birth- day; the master, in turn, later expressed his deep gratitude to “my great friend.” Politically outspoken, Schulhoff joined the Communist Party in the early 1930s and became a delegate at the International Con- gress of Revolutionary Musicians in Moscow (1933). When the Nazis invaded Czechoslo- vakia, Schulhoff took Soviet citizenship as a protective measure. Nonetheless, he was arrested and sent to the concentration camp in Wülzburg, Bavaria, where he perished on August 18, 1942. The Suite for Violin and Piano, op. 1, dates from 1911 or 1912, during Schulhoff ’s stu- dent years at the Cologne Conservatory. This Erwin Schulhoff five-movement work evokes 18th-century dance types, albeit reinterpreted in the chro- matically enhanced tonality of the late 19th century. As in the Baroque format of concert suite, the movements hold to the same ton- ic key (G minor), with the exception of the central B-flat-major Menuetto , whose trio returns to G minor. Schulhoff ’s manuscript conveys descriptive titles for the first and final movements: “Erotik” and “Tanz der Teufelchen.” The association between dance and eroticism remained with Schulhoff for years. Writing about his 1925 ballet Ogela- la , he explained that “when I am to express myself about dance, I think first of erotica.” The “little devil” in the final dance alludes to the legend of a violinist selling his soul to the devil in exchange for supernatural virtuosity. CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862–1918) Sonata No. 3 in G minor, CD 148 In the final years of his life, Debussy began a series of six sonatas for a variety of small chamber groupings, finishing only half the projected number before succumbing to can- cer in 1918. Debussy struggled to create a sense of cyclic unity in the third sonata, a work for violin and piano. Great difficulties emerged in relation to the finale, which em- braced a “cellular” idea related to the earlier movements. Writing to publisher Jacques Durand on October 17, 1916, he conceded that “the first two movements don’t want to have anything to do with it. … Knowing myself as I do, I’m certainly not going to force them to put up with an awkward neighbor.” Due either to ill health or the turmoil of war, Debussy produced no alternative for the fi- nale. Four months later, he restored the “Ne- apolitan” original with slight modification. Still lacking confidence in the work’s orga- nization, Debussy sarcastically described the cyclic construction: “It goes through the most curious contortions before ending up with a simple idea which turns back on itself like a snake biting its own tail—an amusement whose attraction I take leave to doubt!” Claude Debussy (1909) The sonata for violin and piano received its premiere at a concert to benefit blind soldiers onMay 5, 1917; Debussy accompanied violinist Gaston Poulet. (With patriotic pride, the com- poser signed his manuscript “Claude Debussy, musicien français .”) Poulet and Debussy also presented the sonata in Saint-Jean-de-Luz in September—the composer’s last public appearance. Debussy instilled an expressive dialectic in this sonata, especially in the final movement, as he revealed to his friend Robert Godet: “By one of those very human contra- dictions, it’s full of happiness and uproar. In future, don’t be taken in by works that seem to fly through the air; they’ve often been wallow- ing in the shadows of a gloomy brain.” The Allegro vivo is a loosely structured sona- ta movement filled with Gallic warmth and suavity. Two piano chords provide the only preface to an expressive violin melody, later contrasted by a syncopated theme. The Inter- mède presents even more clearly differenti- ated themes, at turns intimate and outgoing, tranquil and agitated. Distinct references to the first movement’s material appear at the beginning of the Très animé finale. An almost manic contest between “happiness and up- roar” follows, with one final luminous idea driving away all gloom. WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1791) Violin Sonata in B-flat major, K. 454 Mozart composed the K. 454 violin sonata for Regina Strinasacchi, an Italian violinist who traveled to Vienna in 1784 to present two con- certs. Moved by her playing, Mozart wrote to his father in a letter dated April 24: “We now have here the famous Strinasacchi fromMan- tua, a very good violinist. She has a great deal of taste and feeling in her playing. I am this moment composing a sonata we are going to play together on Thursday [April 29] at her concert in the theater.” When Leopold Mozart heard Strinasacchi in Salzburg the following year, he noted the same warmth of expression in her playing: “She plays no note without feeling, so even in the sym- phonies, she always played with expression. No one can play an adagio with more feeling and more touchingly than she. Her whole heart and soul are in the melody she is playing, and her tone is both beautiful and powerful.” The three-movement Violin Sonata in B-flat major, K. 454—completed on April 21, 1784— was published later the same year in Vienna as op. 7, no. 3. There is equal interplay between the instruments in this work, unlike earlier sonatas by Mozart that treated the violin as an accompanying instrument to the keyboard. The first movement opens with a majestic Largo introduction. Tempo increases for the Allegro main portion, where the violin pres- ents its first theme, a delicate arch-like mel- ody. A louder second theme leaps forcefully RAVINIA MAGAZINE • JUNE 6 – JULY 2, 2023 32