Notes for: August 6, 2019
This high-spirited early Quintet for String Quartet and Bass offers a delightful look at a gifted composer who has found his voice – that distinctive combination of Classical form and Bohemian folk elements that makes Dvořák’s music instantly recognizable. Despite its published date, the Quintet actually is a slightly revised version of an early one that Dvořák wrote in 1875, and that he intended to publish as Op. 18. As it turned out, 1875 was a watershed year for Dvořák. Then in his mid-30s, he already was a prolific composer, but he was still poor and obscure, struggling to support his family in Prague and little known beyond his Czech homeland. But in 1875 Dvořák was awarded an Austrian state scholarship for talented but impoverished artists. The award relieved him of financial pressures and allowed him to concentrate on composing. That year he also won a prize for his new Quintet from a Prague-based artists’ association. The following year, Dvořák included the Quintet in an application for another scholarship, which he also was granted. This time the panel of judges included Brahms. It was a life-changing moment for Dvořák. Brahms was taken by the Czech composer’s fresh voice and fertile imagination. He became an ardent promoter of Dvořák’s work, encouraging his own publisher, Fritz Simrock, to take him on. Soon after, Simrock published Dvořák’s Moravian Duets and commissioned the Slavonic Dances. Dvořák’s international career was launched.
As you listen to the Quintet for String Quartet and Bass, you’ll understand Brahms’s enthusiasm. It follows the Classical model – a sonata-form first movement, a Scherzo with a contrasting trio, a slow movement in an ABA pattern, and a concluding rondo. But the sound already is pure Dvořák. The Quintet opens with an introduction whose striking rhythm sets the stage for the Allegro fuoco, an energetic movement that combines rhythmic drive and vigorous instrumental exchanges with a sunny lyricism. By substituting a bass for a second viola or cello, Dvořák gives the movement added heft, adds to the richness of the sonorities, and allows the cello to sing out in its higher register as it trades melodic lines with the other instruments.
In the next three movements, Dvořák reveals different sides of his musical personality.
Bohemian melodies and rhythms come to the fore in the syncopated Scherzo, an irresistible, rustic-sounding folk dance with a Classical central trio. With the idyllic Poco andante, Dvořák demonstrates his lyrical gifts while exploiting the Quintet’s unusual scoring – listen, for example, to the effectiveness of the bass’s opening pizzicatos under the other strings’ soaring melody. Last comes a robust rondo in which the lyrical tunes, infectious rhythms, lush sonorities, and expansive harmonies combine to create a joyful Finale.