A Young Festival Hosts a Young Talent Last Tuesday the Rudolfinum’s Suk Hall was host to the young and talented Czech violinist Josef Špaček. The 24-year-old was accompanied on piano by the somewhat unjustly overshadowed Jan Bartoš as part of the Dvořák Prague Festival (Dvořákova Praha). Talent and youth were a recurrent theme that evening; the Dvořák Prague Festival, in only its fourth year, is still relatively young and, oddly…
Tag: Dvorakova Praha
Wednesday, Sept 14, 2011:Commanding Performance
Commanding Performance There have been thousands of good composers and violinists throughout history. But it’s only after artists find their true voice and take command of the material that their good music becomes great. Such, perhaps, was the case with Antonín Dvořák and his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in A Minor, Op 53. Its first version was composed in the summer of 1879, but its final version wasn’t published…
Monday, August 29, 2011:Dvořák’s Birds
Dvořák’s Birds One of Antonín Dvořák’s passions was keeping pigeons. But when he left New York City in June 1893 to spend a summer in the American state of Iowa, he undoubtedly had no idea about how the Iowa birds would impress him. Dvořák was looking forward to a summer on the prairie because “I shall have pigeons there,” he wrote in a letter. But it wasn’t a pigeon that…
