Luboš Fišer: Dreams and Waltzes
Béla Bartók: Romanian Dances, Op. 8a, BB 56
Igor Stravinsky: Valse pour les enfants
Igor Stravinsky: Tango
Fryderyk Chopin: Mazurkas (selection)
Bedřich Smetana: Czech Dances, Series I & II (selection)
Johann Sebastian Bach: Partita in B-flat major, BWV 825
Although for many the name Luboš Fišer (1935–1999) evokes above all his music for numerous film productions, as a composer he gained international recognition with his orchestral, cantata and chamber works. In addition to eight remarkable piano sonatas, he dedicated to the piano the cycle Dreams and Waltzes (1993), which, in a postmodern spirit, combines Chopinesque dreaminess with seemingly banal waltz melodies.
Béla Bartók’s (1881–1945) two Romanian Dances, Op. 8a, composed in 1910, are linked with the beginnings of the composer’s deep interest in folk music. From 1905 onwards, Bartók collected and notated melodies on the Hungarian, Slovak and Romanian countryside. His brilliant pianistic style in these dances perfectly conveys the untamed energy of East European folklore.
The miniature Valse pour les enfants (Waltz for Children) by Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) was written in 1917 in Morges, Switzerland, and published in 1922 in the French daily Le Figaro. The mechanically repeated waltz rhythm here evokes the sound of contemporary children’s music boxes. The Tango (1940) is one of the first works Stravinsky composed after moving to New York. Yet it would not be Stravinsky if he did not enrich the steady, sensual pulse of Argentine tango with hidden irregularities.
The countless lyrical piano pieces that explore the most intimate corners of human emotion earned the Polish Romantic composer Fryderyk Chopin (1810–1849) the epithet “the poet of the piano.” A sentimental, melancholic and dreamy atmosphere often characterises many of his 59 mazurkas, composed between 1825 and 1849, in which he drew inspiration from Polish national dances.
Similarly to Chopin’s mazurkas, Bedřich Smetana’s (1824–1884) Czech Dances were rooted in the awakening of Slavic national consciousness. The two series of dances, from 1877 and 1879, offer a wide range of expressive and atmospheric stylisations of Czech folk dances, shaped into technically demanding, Lisztian piano writing.
The evening concludes with Johann Sebastian Bach’s (1685–1750) Partita in B-flat major, BWV 825, the first in a cycle of six partitas for keyboard instruments, composed gradually between 1726 and 1731. The work is essentially a suite of popular French courtly and folk baroque dances – allemande, courante, sarabande, minuet and gigue – preceded by a prelude. Here too, Bach’s music abounds in grandeur, grace and elegance, as well as agile and sparkling virtuosity.
Text: Ondřej Pivoda
