Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Bagatelles for Two Violins, Cello and Harmonium, Opus 47
ANTONIN DVOŘÁK
Born September 8, 1841, Muhlhausen, Bohemia
Died May 1, 1904, Prague

Dvořák‘s Bagatelles come from a very specific moment in his life and were scored for an ensemble that includes a very specific instrument. The year 1878 was crucial to Dvořák‘s success as a composer. After decades of obscurity and struggle, that year he composed the first set of his Slavonic Dances, the music that would send his name around the world. He was 37 years old, and success – however late it came – would be sweet. He finished the Slavonic Dances in March 1878, and during the first twelve days of May he composed a much more modest work, written for the pleasure of amateur musicians and scored for a quartet made up of two violins, cello and harmonium. Dvořák called this piece Maliĉkosti, Czech for “bagatelles.” He felt no reservations about writing lighter music for amateur musicians – a few years later, while writing a different work, he said: “I am now writing some small Bagatelles for two violins and viola, and this work gives me just as much pleasure as if I were composing a great symphony.”

The distinctive instrument in this quartet is the harmonium, a small (often portable) reed organ operated by a treadle pumped by the player‘s feet. Invented as recently as 1842, the harmonium became popular in the late-nineteenth century, particularly for the many transcriptions of orchestral music made for it. Curiously, Arnold Schoenberg was one of those most attracted to this instrument, and he arranged a number of orchestral works for it for performance in Vienna early in the twentieth century. The harmonium makes a rich but gentle sound, and that subdued sound is an important part of the character of the Bagatelles, for it nicely complements the sound of the strings above it.

The Bagatelles may have been written for amateur musicians to play at home but those amateurs had better be pretty good: the first violin part in particular is often set in the instrument‘s highest range, and it demands an accomplished player. All five movements have considerable melodic charm, and music this attractive hardly requires detailed description. Perhaps a line or two will suffice. The opening movement, marked Allegretto scherzando, makes use of the Czech folk-tune Hraly dudy, and this melody will recur in various forms throughout the Bagatelles. This opening movement, with the two violins weaving effortlessly between unexpected keys as the cello offers pizzicato accompaniment, is particularly appealing. The second movement is a minuet, but the most distinctive thing about it is its fundamental pulse: the rhythm of a dotted quarter can be heard in every single measure of this piece.

The third movement is based on a variant of the folk-tune heard in the first movement, while the fourth is a canon. This canon proceeds at first on a dialogue between first violin and cello (the second violin sits out the opening section of the piece), then grows more complex in the latter stages of the movement. Dvořák makes the concluding Poco allegro a crisp polka; its middle section recalls the folk-tune from the first movement, then the polka returns to dance the Bagatelles to their graceful close.

Grand Sextet in E-flat Major for Two Violins, Viola, Cello, Bass and Piano
MIKHAIL GLINKA
Born June 1, 1804, Novospasskoye
Died February 15, 1857, Berlin

We remember Mikhail Glinka today as “the father of Russian music,” the composer who taught generations of Russian composers that they could turn to Russian subjects, themes, and materials for their music rather than trying to imitate German composers and German forms. Operas like A Life for the Czar and Ruslan and Ludmilla and orchestral works like Kamarinskaya blazed a path that composers as different as Borodin, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky and Shostakovich would gladly follow.

Yet the work by Glinka heard on this concert finds him at a very early stage of his career, long before he became a standard-bearer for Russian music. Glinka was raised as the indulged child of a wealthy family, and he grew up as a dilettante, endlessly talented but undisciplined and unmotivated. It was during an extended stay in Italy (1830-34) that Glinka came into contact with Italian opera and began to expand his musical horizons (he also met the young Mendelssohn and Berlioz during his years in Italy). The avowed purpose of Glinka‘s trip to Italy was to study composition, but he appears to have done little of that. Instead, he charmed musical gatherings with his piano playing, wrote a large number of piano pieces for these occasions, and enjoyed the attention of young women.

Glinka did not write much chamber music – he found his true voice in the orchestra and in the opera house. But it was while he was living in Milan that he wrote the only two of his chamber works to remain in the repertory – the Trio Pathetique for clarinet, cello and piano and the Grand Sextet. Both were composed in Milan in 1832, when Glinka was 28.

The Grand Sextet is scored for the unique ensemble of string quartet plus doublebass and piano but Glinka turns the primary role in this music over to the piano. The opening Allegro is a substantial movement that constitutes nearly half the length of the entire work. After a series of opening flourishes, Glinka sets a pattern that will continue throughout the Sextet: the piano announces the opening idea, followed by a repetition from the strings, in this case the violins. The cello has the expansive second theme, and again the violins quickly take it up. The piano has a particularly prominent role across the long span of this movement.

The Andante is in ternary form. The piano leads the way here, sometimes in dialogue with the strings, and at the end the music proceeds without pause into the finale, marked Allegro con spirito. This is music of a full sonority and grand gestures. There are more intimate interludes along the way, but the principal impression this music makes is of a huge sound, and the Sextet finally drives to an animated conclusion.

No one hearing this music without knowing its composer would guess that it is by Glinka. And perhaps he himself sensed that his true course would lie in a different direction. The year after composing the Sextet, Glinka left Italy, never to return. He spent a few months of intense study in Berlin, then returned to Russia and quickly began to compose operas on Russian subjects. That would take his music – and all Russian music – in entirely new directions. The Grand Sextet shows us the work of an immensely talent young man, but one still searching for a distinctive voice as a composer.

Sextet in C Major, Opus 37
ERNST VON DOHNÁNYI
Born July 27, 1877, Pressburg
Died February 9, 1960, Hungary

Ernst von Dohnányi was not only one of the greatest pianists who ever lived, he was also a champion of Hungarian music and one of the primal forces in Hungarian musical life in the early decades of the twentieth century. He served as conductor of the Budapest Philharmonic from 1919 until 1944, was music director at the Hungarian Radio, and was for many years director of the Budapest Academy of Music, where he taught piano and composition. He championed the music of Bartók, Kodály and other young Hungarian composers, and he gave international tours as a concert pianist. So great was his influence that Bartók noted that Dohnányi was essentially providing the musical life of the entire Hungarian nation during these years.

All of these activities took their toll, however, and in the mid-1930s, when he was in his fifties, Dohnányi began to experience a number of health problems. He cut back his touring and his teaching workload, and his own composition began to diminish as well: the Sextet in C Major, composed in 1935, was the only music Dohnányi composed between 1933 and 1937.

Dohnányi wrote this music early in 1935, following a bout of thrombosis, but there is no sign of weakness in the Sextet, a big work scored for unusual forces that generate a huge sonority. In fact, its sound is quasi-orchestral: the Sextet has a wind section (clarinet and horn), a string section (violin, viola and cello) and a virtuoso piano part (Dohnányi himself was pianist at the première of the Sextet in Budapest on June 17, 1935). He sometimes divides his ensemble into sections, and there are moments in this music when one can easily imagine it re-scored for full orchestra.

The aptly-titled Allegro appassionato is a big movement, in both duration and sonority. It opens with an orchestral sound: over heavy piano chords and busy cello arpeggios the horn sounds its commanding opening theme, a theme that will recur throughout the Sextet. The second subject arrives in the viola a few moments later, and Dohnányi builds this often dramatic movement from these materials. The first three notes of the opening horn-call will figure prominently in this movement, and finally they drive it to a full-throated close.

The mood changes completely at the Intermezzo, which is nocturne-like in its subdued atmosphere as it glides along a 12/8 meter. Dohnányi interrupts this reverie with a malevolent march that breaks in upon the peace of the opening, and these two quite different kinds of music alternate across the movement.

The Allegro con sentimento opens with an elegant and good-spirited clarinet solo that sets the mood – when the piano enters, its part is marked both dolce and tranquillo. This movement is episodic – the opening gives way to a Presto that races along its 6/8 meter, and this in turn is followed by a suave interlude for strings. Along the way, alert listeners will hear reminiscences of the opening horn call. The music accelerates and then rushes without pause into the fast finale, which Dohnányi specifies should be giocoso (“happy”). This movement has been called a “jazz parody,” and certainly its main idea has a perkiness that might seem to recall jazz. A second theme dances jauntily, and these high spirits prevail until the horn call from the very beginning returns to drive the Sextet to its most emphatic conclusion.