Suk: A Summer's Tale / A Winter's Tale

Description

Josef Suk (1874-1935) A Summer's Tale, Op. 29A Winter's Tale,Op. 9Josef Suk belongs to the second generationof Czech nationalist composers, after Smetana and Dvorak. He was born in 1874in Krecovice, the son of a village schoolmaster and began to play the violin atthe age of eight and later the piano, writing his first composition, a Polka,in 1882. At the age of eleven he entered the Prague Conservatory, studyingthe violin with the director Antonin Bennewitz and theory with Josef Foerster.His chamber-music teacher, during an extra year of study in 1891, was HanusWihan, for whom Dvorak wrote his famous Cello Concerto in B minor andwho trained the distinguished Czech Quartet in which Suk played second violinuntil his retirement in 1933 with the consequent disbanding of the quartet,after giving some four thousand concerts. He studied composition first withKarel Stecker and, after his graduation in 1891, studied with Dvorak, whosefavourite pupil he became. In 1898 he married the latter's daughter Otilie,whose death in 1905 brought him great sadness, leading to the composition ofhis Asrael Symphony. He taught composition at the Prague Conservatory,of which he later became director, and as a teacher exercised a stronginfluence over a whole generation of Czech composers. He died in 1935.In spite of Suk's long career in chambermusic, his major compositions are largely those written for orchestra, from theDramatic Ovel1ure of his graduation from Dvorak's class on to a seriesof symphonic poems and his powerful Asrael Symphony, dedicated to thememory of his wife. His Musical Tale for Orchestra, Pohadka Leta (A Summer'sTale), was first sketched out during the course of a few months in 1907, tobe orchestrated the following year. It is scored for a large orchestra ofpiccolo, pairs of flutes, oboes, cor anglais and clarinets, a bass clarinet,two bassoons, double bassoon, six French horns, three trumpets, threetrombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, tam-tam, bass drum, piano, twoharps, celesta and strings, with an optional organ part. The work, which isdedicated to the Czech conductor and composer Karel Kovarovic, who conductedthe first performance in Prague in January 1909, continues the emotionalnarrative of the Asrael Symphony, opening with a movement under thetitle Voice of Life and Consolation. Here Man is shown dogged by thecruelty of Fate and now seeking escape in nature, his sadness represented bythe sighing chords of muted double basses over sustained and muted French hornoctaves at the outset. The first full theme to emerge is heard from violins andoboes, the theme of man, which mounts to a dynamic climax. A distant coranglais introduces nature in a second theme, in which other instruments join, amelody derived from the death theme in Asrael. This material is workedout in traditional symphonic form, leading to an idyllic closing section,initiated by a solo violin, accompanied by harp arpeggios, with a recurrentfigure from the first theme constantly