Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884)
Any country with a long history and colorful folklore will give birth to heavyweight composers. They can use vivid music to record the legends, historical sites, heroes, scenery and national character of the motherland and the nation. How fortunate the Czech Republic is, Smeta is the artistic hero that the Czech Republic has been waiting for. He independently developed a poetic Czech musical style that relied independently on the material of folk songs, honoring his homeland with operas and symphonic poems.
<h1>Early life</h1>
Smetana was born on 2 March 1824 in Litomysl. At that time, the region was not called Czech, but still belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the people were educated in German. Smetana did not write in Czech until the age of thirty-two. His father was a winemaker and amateur musician. Smetana was able to play Haydn's string quartet at the age of five and solo piano at the age of six. However, because his father did not approve of his music career, he did not allow him to receive a professional music education. He changed schools several times during his academic career, and at the age of fourteen, he abandoned his studies and spent a long time in Prague, experiencing the rich cultural life there and being deeply shocked by Liszt's live concerts. At the age of seventeen, he was often in and out of the dance parties of wealthy families in the Plzen area, playing the piano solo, which was quite popular. At the age of nineteen, he finally graduated from school and went to Prague to develop, hitting walls everywhere. A girl she had known before, Katerina Kolarova, was pursuing a career in piano performance, so she persuaded her teacher to teach Smetana harmony and counterpoint, consolidating her theoretical foundations in composition. Smetana was so poor that he couldn't even pay his tuition fees, but thanks to the recommendation of the dean of a conservatory to be the tutor of the Count of Shurn, he solved the problem. Smeta met Berlioz and Schumann at the house of Count Schurn. At the age of twenty-one, he boasted that his piano skills were like Liszt's, and his composition was in line with Mozart's.
At the age of twenty-three, he decided to give up his career as a pianist to start a music school and seek Liszt's help. Liszt did not mention the loan, but promised to find a publisher on his behalf and guarantee the publication of his work. When the school was founded in 1848, coinciding with a brief revolution against Austro-Hungarian rule, Smetana sympathized with the revolutionaries and helped pile up obstacles. Although the revolution was suppressed, it led him to the path of the National Music School. In 1849, Smetana married Kolarova, but family tragedies followed, and three of her four daughters died prematurely, and the Piano Trio (Op. 15) was a lament for the death of the eldest daughter who had already shown her musical talent. Even more unfortunately, his wife, Kolalova, suffered from tuberculosis.
<h1>Sweden is up and down</h1>
At the age of thirty-two, feeling that there was no future for staying in Prague, Smetana chose to move with his family to Gothenburg, Sweden, where he served as choral conductor and resumed his status as a pianist, taking in many students. Five years before and after the Swedish period, he met Liszt, who had always encouraged him, and was also ridiculed by a Viennese conductor that he came from a people who only produced performers and not composers, which strengthened Smetana's determination to compose music for the Czech people. During this time, Smetana completed three dramatic symphonic poems heavily influenced by Wagner, namely Charles III, a character in Shakespeare's play, whose music depicts the harassment of the king before the expedition, leading to his eventual defeat; Wallenstein, which was intended to be used as a prelude to Shearer's play, including: complex camp life, monastic preaching, vigil, and ending march; and Hakon Jarl. The story of the brutal Count Of Hacon who wanted to re-establish a pagan regime and was later defeated by the deposed heir to the throne.
In 1859, the Smetana family returned to Prague to escape the cold, and his wife died in Dresden on the way. The following year, at the age of thirty-six, Smetana remarried, succeeding him as his brother's younger sister, Bettina Ferdinandova. In May 1861, when the political situation in Prague eased, Smetana decided to return to his hometown and settle down, and began to work hard for Czech music with a mature attitude.
<h1>Creation of the Czech National Opera</h1>
Upon his return, Smetana completed the opera The Brandenburger of Bohemia in 1863, an opera with an opera theme similar to Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, which was not available until 1866 when he had the opportunity to premiere in the Temporary Theatre due to peer boycott. After the successful premiere, Smetana was given the position of permanent conductor of the Temporary Theatre, a position he held for eight years. Soon after, he released the opera The Betrayed Bride, which coincided with the eve of the Op-Operative War, and the premiere was not a success, and Smetana took refuge in a rural monastery for a month. A few weeks later, "The Betrayed Bride" finally became a sensation, and since then, the grandeur has continued, and according to statistics, "The Betrayed Bride" has been performed more than 2,000 times at the Prague National Theatre in the past hundred years.
Story: The teenage girl Marenka falls in love with Jenik, but her parents seduce Kecal, the marriage broker, and ask her to marry Vasek, the son of the landlord Michael. Broker Kecal signs a contract with Jenik, asking him to give up his bride, Marenka, on the condition that Marenka must marry the "son" of the landlord Michael. Later, it is discovered that Jenik is the long-lost eldest son of the landlord Michael, Jenik and Marenka eventually become a family, the second son Vasek falls in love with the circus actor Esmeralda, and the broker Kecal becomes the laughing stock of everyone. This opera became a masterpiece of national opera, full of pleasant melodies and folk dance rhythms.
In 1868, in celebration of the foundation of the betrayed bride, Smetana released another opera, Dalibor, which was similar to Beethoven's Fidelio, with a slight Wagner shadow in music, but was not very successful because it was very different from the audience's interests. It was not until a few years after Smetana's death that the opera entered the ranks of the main Czech operas.
In 1874, Smetana completed the opera Two Widows. This is one of Richard Strauss's favorite operas, and whenever he visits the Prague conductor, he must first check whether he can see the performance of the play. His own opera Interlude was also heavily influenced by The Two Widows. The plot shows the manor's hostess, Karolina, and her cousin Anezka, both widows, participating in the farm's harvest festival. Mumlal, the warden of the hunting grounds, now catches ladislav the poacher, who was actually deliberately caught in order to get close to Anezka. Soon the two widows competed to win ladislav's favor, and ladislav pursued Anezka. Anezka pretended to refuse, and Karolina took the opportunity to become inseparable from Ladyslav. Mumlal's flirtation with Karolina is met with a cold face, and Anezka is anxious and angry. The final banquet scene still ended comically, leaving only Mumla's complaints. For this opera, Smetana himself described it as a "unique salon style", which is similar to Mozart's musical spirit.
<h1>Motherland, motherland</h1>
In November 1872, Smetana completed the patriotic opera Libuse, the pagan ruler of Bohemia, which was not premiered until 1881 – as the opening play of the Prague National Theatre. But the patriotic theme of creating this opera inspired Smetana to compose a series of symphonic poems, "My Motherland". "My Fatherland" is a series of six pieces, completed in sections around 1874-1880, during which time Smetana became deaf in both ears due to syphilis infection, and finally became completely deaf. Miraculously, creativity is not affected.
The six symphonic poems of "My Motherland" are: "Vysehrad", which is a historical rock related to Libuse outside Prague, and the music describes historical legends and vicissitudes; the eight fragments of "Vltava" describe the area where the Voltava River flows, imitating the river in a flowing shape; "Sarka", a rocky valley outside Prague, named after the heroine Sarka. The music depicts her beauty, as well as her aggression by love and hate; Tabor, a town in southern Bohemia in the Middle Ages, the base of Hussite, is a symbol of the czech revolutionary resistance. The music is a metaphor for the faith and spirit of the revolutionaries; Blanik uses the same chant theme as Tabor, which can be used as a sequel to Tabor, and also fully describes the scenery of the Blanik Mountains , the "Prague Spring" music festival opens every year with this song.
<h1>Sad evening scene</h1>
In 1876, at the age of fifty-two, Smetana published an autobiographical review of youth, String Quartet No. 1 in E minor (from my life). The four movements of this song have specific references, namely: the first movement, when I was young, I pursued art, romantic atmosphere, unspeakable longing, and a warning of future misfortune; the second movement, the happy time of youth, everyone knows that I love dance; the third movement, the description of my wife Kolalova; the fourth movement, on the road to the joy of striving for national music, I unfortunately encountered an ear disease disaster, the future is uncertain, restore the little light of hope, dream back to the early years, quite remorseful.
In 1876 and 1878, Smetana launched the operas Kissing and The Secret, which echoed the Betrayed Bride, but unfortunately did not spread widely and did not go out of the Czech country. At this time, Smetana was living in the countryside with her daughter Zofie and son-in-law. He was so ill that he lost his memory and could not even speak smoothly; but he still wrote the final opera "Devil's Wall". The play premiered in 1882 and was unsuccessful. In 1883, Smetana published string quartet No. 2 in D minor, which reflected the pain of deafness, and completed his last symphonic poem, The Prague Carnival (actually a prelude and a Polish dance, part of the conceived suite). He had originally planned to adapt Shakespeare's play The Twelfth Night into the opera Viola, but only wrote 363 bars, and was forced to be sent to a mental sanatorium because of frequent hallucinations, accompanied by signs of madness and self-harm. There, he had tried to escape and could no longer recognize his loved ones.
Although in his later years, Smetana repeatedly quarreled with the theater over royalties, and sometimes the performance of his works was deliberately neglected and did not reserve a seat for him; on March 2, 1884, many people in the music industry still celebrated his sixtieth birthday with the premiere of "Rhapsody of Prague", but unfortunately Smetana, who had a nervous breakdown in the sanatorium, was already unhappy at this time.
Two months later, Smetana passed away on May 12. The funeral was held at Tyn Church, where the funeral processions were quite spectacular, with trumpets chiming in unison as the national theatre passed.
<h1>Album introduction</h1>
Due to the language barrier, it is currently difficult to find Smetana's opera recordings in addition to the Czech Republic's own record company, and if you want to listen to the full picture of "The Betrayed Bride" and "The Two Widows", you can only find Supraphon.
"My Motherland" should be preferred to the interpretation of Eastern European conductors, who are more able to control the rhythm and charm of the authenticity. Kubelik is particularly authoritative, recording three times, in order: Decca publishes his collaboration with the Vienna Philharmonic; DG publishes his collaboration with the Boston Symphony Orchestra; and Supraphon publishes his collaboration with the Czech Philharmonic. The most significant version of Supraphon (111208-2) is Kubelik's return homecoming after forty-one years of exile, solemn and magnificent and full of patriotic enthusiasm. If both performance and recording are taken into account, the Philips edition (432196-2) of Antal Dorati and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam is the most exciting, combining the dramatic creation of conducting techniques with the super showmanship of the orchestra.