Czech Chamber Music Society • Michael Volle

When the eagerly awaited premiere of the Symphony in E minor “From the New World” took place in December 1893 at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Dvořák, now a celebrity, informed his publisher Fritz Simrock: “According to the newspapers, no composer has ever achieved such a triumph.” However, no amount of fame and glory could mask the storm clouds that had been gathering over America for months. Even the composer himself was affected by the severe economic depression that began in April 1893. Suddenly, the president of the conservatoire was unable to fulfil the school’s financial obligations to Dvořák. She repeatedly delayed paying his monthly salary, and after she wrote him a bad cheque, beginning in December 1893 the composer was not getting so much as a penny. The public was unaware that the distinguished composer was getting into financial difficulties. And Dvořák? He kept his feet firmly on the ground and dealt with the honouring of his contract very decently and discreetly; he even considered cancelling the contract and returning home. Above all, he reacted to the situation in a creative manner. During Lent, he took a Czech translation of the scriptures (Bible of Kralice), chose psalm texts from it, and in March 1894 created a musical setting of the Czech verses in a cycle of ten Biblical Songs, Op. 99 for solo voice and piano. There was no commission, no performances were planned, and no expectations were being fulfilled; he was simply composing to satisfy an inner urge. The result was a highly personal work imbued with faith, intimate in expression, outwardly plain, yet enormously moving. In the worldwide song repertoire, it is difficult to find a parallel to the manner in which Dvořák employs his supreme compositional mastery to set the words of the Holy Scriptures. While these are songs according to their title, their compositional shaping also reflects the composer’s thorough familiarity with sacred music, the ritual of the Mass, and the opera, cantata, and pastoral genres. The composer brings together a diverse range of expressive means to create a single whole, a unified work in which Dvořák’s universality reaches monumental dimensions.

This evening’s pianist is also active as a conductor and composer. As the basis for new songs for baritone and piano written in 2024, he chose very unusual material—texts by Václav Havel (1936–2011). Václav Havel had a warm relationship with music and especially with musicians. He loved live concerts in a variety of genres, and he supported the protagonists of the Czech musical underground who were persecuted by the communist regime, so it might seem a bit odd that until now no composer has taken inspiration from his literary works. Already as a scout, Václav Havel demonstrated his literary gifts, becoming the camp chronicler, and he made a note to himself: “The word is also an action.” He was imprisoned three times for his civic stances, spending a total of nearly five years behind bars. From there, he wrote letters to his wife Olga, and an anthology of those letters was published later in book form. It was mainly this collection of Havel’s writings that inspired the German composer Reinhard Seehafer to create his Four Songs to words by Václav Havel for baritone and piano. From the extensive collection of Havel’s letters, Seehafer has selected just a few ideas and the constantly repeated greeting “I kiss you / Vašek”, with which the first song begins and ends. For the second song, the composer turned to an earlier text from Havel’s poetry collection Anticodes (Prague, 1964). In those experimental poems, Havel’s unbound imagination playfully mocks the absurdity of the current political situation. At the same time, however, the poems uphold timeless values; in fact, “Five Features of the Man of the Future” still has plenty to say to today’s society as it confronts artificial intelligence. The third song, balladlike in mood, returns to Letters to Olga. Václav Havel examined the prison world from all angles, including some that he had not expected: “I’ve noticed another odd thing: that in some ways, there is far more truth in this world than in the world outside. Things and people manifest themselves as they really are. Lies and hypocrisy vanish…” In the final song, which also employs a quote from the Saint Wenceslas Chorale, Havel’s words undermine “the traditional argument of all those who have given up already: that all is lost anyway”. Havel does this with humility, but at the same time with firm determination: “Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost...” The new work was written using English translations of Havel’s texts, and today it is receiving its world premiere.

When Franz Liszt is mentioned, what usually comes to mind is a piano virtuoso who achieved almost demonic notoriety in his day. He was famous all over Europe, first as a pianist, then also as a composer, a conductor, and a great supporter of the arts and of artists. Already in his youth, Liszt had been arranging compositions written by others, ranging from the music of Bach to works by composers who were just getting started, and he played those works at a time when that music was not yet sufficiently appreciated. For example, it was Liszt who familiarised audiences at his concerts with the songs of Franz Schubert in his own arrangements for piano solo. Later on, when he began to compose his own songs, usually he would later create piano versions of them, so it is no wonder that, for example, his songs Tre sonetti del Petrarca (1843–1845) are far better known in their piano transcriptions made by the composer himself later, in 1858. However, the song will be heard at today’s recital in yet a third, still later version, and it vividly documents Liszt’s attitude towards all of his vocal works; he would almost always go back after time had passed and create new versions. His musical settings of Petrarch’s sonnets are in the original Italian, but the texts he usually chose were in his native German; Heinrich Heine became one of his favourite poets. Once again, the musical setting of the poem Im Rhein, im schönen Strome (In the Rhine, in the beautiful river) exists in two different versions, always with a brilliant, almost cinematic depiction of a river current. Liszt, however, never left off at the level of superficial tone painting; he expressed literary emotions through unique music that was often highly experimental for its day. In another song based on Heine’s poem Vergiftet sind meine Lieder (My songs are full of poison), the dramatic writing and some daring details of the harmony anticipate musical developments by several decades. Liszt’s setting of Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s poem Der du von dem Himmel bist (You who come from heaven) exhibits an intimacy of expression that reveals to us a composer who would be ordained to minor orders of the Catholic ministry a few years later. He was inspired to compose the song Freudvoll und leidvoll (Full of joy and sorrow) not only by Goethe’s poem, but also by Beethoven’s famous musical setting, which Liszt knew well, having even arranged it for piano solo. In Liszt’s own song, he followed in the footsteps of his revered predecessor by using the same motif and contrasts between the major and minor modes, but in a modern, concentrated manner. For the song Ihr Glocken von Marling (O bells of Marling) Liszt, by then getting along in years, took inspiration not from the poet Emil Kuh and his rather banal poetry, but instead from the composer’s visit to the village Marling in northern Italy. The sound of the bells there inspired him to create a unique, avant-garde sound world that feels almost impressionistic. Es rauschen die Winde (The wind blows) with its tone of excitement is a setting of a poem by Ludwig Rellstab, and it shows Liszt’s ability to wed the meaning of a text to music perfectly. The same applies to the musical setting of Nikolaus Lenau’s poem Die drei Zigeuner (The Three Gypsies). It was gypsies in Liszt’s hometown Raiding near the Hungarian town Sopron who predicted that the little boy would have an extraordinary life, and later on Liszt liked to say about himself: “I am half Gypsy, half a Franciscan monk.” He fit that description at the very least for his constant travels around Europe and for his spiritual nature.

The songs of Franz Liszt remain a rather underappreciated part of the 19th-century song repertoire. It was, in fact, Liszt who began to relax tonality and to experiment with harmony, showing the way for the composers who succeeded him. Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, who was later largely responsible for Liszt focusing on composing instead of on a fleeting concert career, gave very fitting characterisation of his importance as an innovator: “Liszt has flung his lance far into the future.”