1 CD | 2564-60221-2 | ℗ & © 2003

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)





The Golden Spinning Wheel (Zlatý kolovrat), Op. 109
28' 21" CD 1 - 1
The Noon Witch (Polednice), Op. 108
13' 47"
- Allegretto
 5' 44"
CD1 - 2
- Largo 3' 18"
CD1 - 3
- Scherzo: Molto vivace 2' 07"
CD1 - 4
- Allegro con fuoco 2' 38"
CD1- 5
The Water Goblin (Vodník), Op. 107
21' 08" CD2 - 1
The Wild Dove (Holoubek), Op. 110
19' 45" CD2 - 2



 
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Nikolaus Harnoncourt
 
Recording
Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam (Olanda): 24-26 October 2001 (Op. 109; December 1998 (Op. 108); October 1999 (Op. 107); December 1997 (Op. 110) | live (Opp. 108 & 109) | studio (Opp. 107 & 110) | Friedemann Engelbrecht | Helmut Mühle | Michael Brammann | Tobias Lehmann | Philipp Knop | René Möller | Peter Weinsheimer | Jörg Mohr | Jens Schünemann
First edition on CD
Warner Classics - Teldec | 2564-60221-2 | 2 CDs | 42' 43" & 41' 03" | DDD | LC 6019 | ℗ & © 2003
Note
This publication homogeneously collects the four Symphonic Poems Opp. 107-110 already published separately.

Notes
In the late 19th century, many composers began setting to music non-musical topics that were often inspired by literature. The symphonic poem, as this young genre was called, became the domain of the “New German School" centered around Liszt, Wagner and Strauss, and was bitterly criticised by the supporters of Brahms, who, as the champion of a classical aesthetic of absolute music, represented the opposite pole.
With his symphonic poems Opp. 107-110, Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904) thus set out to cross an ideological minefield. Although he had been welcomed into the “Brahmsian" camp with his symphonic and chamber-music works, he left their puristic tenets behind him in his later oeuvre. Dvořák wrote his four symphonic poems in 1896, upon his return from America. He thus switched over to “the faction of the reflective programmatic composers", to use the words of a reviewer. It should be noted, however, that Dvořák‘s heightened interest in the symphonic poem and, by extension, program music was not as sudden as it might seem, since his last symphony, From the New World, had already contained an implicit program.
According to Liszt's definition of the genre, the symphonic poem is characterised by the fact that “while they should not be neglected, all exclusively musical considerations are to be subordinated to those of the action of the given subject." Dvořák followed this premise by giving absolute priority to his literary sources while continuing to cast his symphonic poems in conventional forms (The Water Goblin is conceived as a rondo; The Noon Witch conceals a symphonic form). Dvořák always sought to “bring out the various main figures, their characters and the poetic atmospherc", to quote the composer. In his character sketches, he kept so close to the text that one could effortlessly underlay the poem’s respective verses. The poems on which the pieces are based were all taken from Jaromir Erben's collection Kytice, which had long since seized the composer’s attention; it had supplied the text to The Specter's Bride, for example. Perhaps Dvořák found the definitive stimulus to return to these folk ballads on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Erben‘s death on 21 November 1895.
The stories were remarkably blood-curdling affairs for a father of nine to take as his models. In The Noon Witch, an overwrought mother threatens hcr whining child with the noon witch, who then kills the child, and in The Water Goblin a newborn infant also perishes. The gruesome subjects created ripples of unease among the sensitive urban public, and the Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick noted: “I can hardly imagine how someone would choose to make a musical depiction of such a revolting topic, a story that shocks every discriminating person."
All the more discriminating, however, is the composer in his musical treatment of the topics. This applies in particular to The Water Goblin Op. 107. In his biography of the composer, Jaromil Burghauser underscores the “colourfulness of the expressive means, so close to Impressionism." Dvořák gives the water goblin’s sub-aquatic world a charm that is nothing less than magical and sensual. The muted strings create a glittering sound surface that inevitably reminds one of the French impressionists‘ evocations of the sea. When the piece begins, we see the water goblin sitting on the bank of a lake. This is followed by a dialogue between a mother and her daughter. In spite of her mother's warnings, the daughter goes too close to the lake and is abducted by the water goblin, who takes her as his wife. After the birth of a child, he lets her return home briefly, but keeps the child as a hostage. When she does not return before the evening bells peal, the spirit kills the child and hurls its battered body at the women‘s hut.
In The Noon Witch Op. 108, the composer treated his source more freely and prefaced the actual narration by describing an idyllic setting. The peace is then disturbed by the child's piercing screams (the oboe’s repeated notes), which prompts the mother to utter her above-mcntioned threat. A slow movement with evocative string chords in pianissimo suggests the heavy, oppressive atmosphere marking the approach of the noon witch who demands that the child be handed over to her. A frantic struggle for the child ensues (Scherzo), after which the bells peal twelve times and the nightmare seems to be over. In the final episode, the father returns home and discovers that his wife has suffocated the child in her panicstricken embrace.
In the latter two symphonic poems, the nature spirits are advocates of positive forces. The Golden Spinning Wheel Op. 109 is a kind of Czech variation of the Cinderella topic. Opening the piece is a horn fanfare signalising that the king has organised a hunting party. In the woods, he meets the peasant girl Dornicka and falls in love with her. While she is on her way to the palace, she is killed and gruesomely mutilated by her stepmother and stepsister. The unsuspecting king then marries the wrong woman. A wizard finds the mutilated body in the woods and sends his apprentice to the palace with a golden spinning wheel. He offers the wheel to the young queen in exchange for Dornicka’s eyes, arms and legs. After Dornicka is pieced together again, she returns to life to the strains of a delicate violin cantilena, whereby Dvořák gives an incantatory, ritual feeling to the old man’s magical words through church-musical turns. The golden spinning wheel thus reveals the crime to the king, who rides into the woods and brings Dornicka home. The composer discreetly glosses over the ghastly end of the two evil women in order to let the piece end on a note of undisturbed happiness.
There is more barbarity in the last symphonic poem as well, The Wild Dove Op. 110. The scene begins with a muted Funeral procession. The young widow’s tears are not genuine, however, for she has poisoned her husband in order to marry her lover. Their wedding is followed by merry dancing. Dvořák sets measures in duple and triple time against each other, as if the excessive boisterousness of the dancing were intended to numb the widow's guilty conscience. Over the grave of the murdered husband sits a wild dove, whose cooing keeps reminding the woman of her deed and finally drives her into the water, where she drowns. As he had done in The Golden Spinning Wheel, Dvořák also lets this piece come to a conciliatory end: the spectral string chords of the epilogue testify to the transfiguration of the repentant sinner.
Gunilla Eschenbach
Translation: Roger Clement

Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1929-2016)
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