Dvořák's Symphony No. 9

What are you going to listen to?

Vertebrate vernacular

What do tonight's compositions have in common? That's the question composition student Carlotta van Schwartzenberg asked herself for her One Minute Symphony. According to her, Jeths' Suite, Schumann's Cello Concerto and Dvořák's Ninth Symphony share two important traits: melancholic and epic. For Vertebrate vernacular, she took on the challenge of combining both traits, in a very short time that leaves no room for transitions.

Portrait

Willem Jeth's opera Ritratto - Italian for "portrait" - tells the story of the excessively wealthy Italian marquise Luisa Casati. She was famous for the lavish parties she hosted and had her portraits or photographs taken by numerous artists. With her black-rimmed eyes, flaming red hair and eccentric behavior, she tried to gain a place in the art world. Against the background of the outbreak of World War I, the libretto questions the importance of art. At a party, all kinds of artists from Casati's time gather. Casati does not engage with worldly problems and focuses blindly on her passion.

After an online world premiere in March 2020, the production still premiered offline in October 2021 at De Nationale Opera in Amsterdam, with the Residentie Orkest in the orchestra pit. A suite was also completed that same year.

An upbeat piece

Robert Schumann had a thing for the cello. As a child he was taught this instrument for some time and proved to be quite talented. Later, when he irreparably damaged his right hand while studying the piano, he even considered switching to the cello, but it never came to that. It wasn't until 1849 that he returned to the instrument with his Fünf Stücke im Volkston for cello and piano. A year later, he composed his only solo concerto for the cello. Schumann was then just living in Düsseldorf, where he had been placed in overall charge of musical life. Because of his mediocre quality as a conductor, friction soon arose that eventually led to his dismissal. Consequently, the now completed Cello Concerto did not come to a performance despite the fact that his wife Clara considered it one of her husband's finest pieces. Finding a publisher also proved difficult. Finally, the major publisher Breitkopf took the plunge, especially since Schumann had touted the concerto as "ein durchaus heiteres Stück. Schumann himself never got to hear his Cello Concerto. It was not until four years after his death in 1860 that it was premiered. But that was in honor of his fiftieth birthday at a large memorial concert at the Leipzig Conservatory.

American symphony

One of the most famous composers in Europe, Antonín Dvořák came to the United States in 1892 to assume the leadership of the New York Conservatory of Music. Homesickness drove him back to the Czech Republic after a few years, but he did take with him a wealth of musical impressions that he incorporated into his Ninth Symphony aptly titled "From the New World. There is a bit of everything to be heard. Most European still was the "Yankee" folk music, mostly inspired by the folk melodies of England, Scotland and Ireland. But he was also fascinated by the music of the natives. He even owned Theodor Baker's book Über die Musik der Nordamerikanischen Wilden and visited a Buffalo Bill-style show a few times with cowboys and Indians fighting each other. But he was most impressed by the spirituals he came into contact with through some conservatory students. The famous Largo with the alto oboe solo seems to have been inspired by them, so much so that it was later given a tuneful religious text and took on a life of its own as a true Negro spiritual. But whether it is really so American-tinged? Czech musicologists once examined it more closely and suspect that it may have been derived from a Bohemian lullaby. The beloved homeland apparently never lost sight of Dvořák.

Kees Wisse and Jan Jaap Zwitser