(From Birmingham)
THE BIRMINGHAM STUDIO AUGMENTED
ORCHESTRA
(Leader, FRANK CANTELL)
Conducted by JOSEPH LEWIS
SMETANA, like Mozart, appeared as a child prodigy pianist; he also played the violin and composed, before the tale of his years had reached double figures. Like Beethoven, he suffered what is probably the gravest misfortune for a musician; he became totally doaf in his last years. In a way of which neither of these masters thought, however, he was an ardent patriot, and gave his country's music a place in the world which it had not enjoyed before. His biggest purely orchestral work was in honour of his native land, and called comprehensively My Country.
It is a series of six symphonic poems, of which this is the fourth, and no more need be said of it than that it illustrates in a happy way the pastoral side of Bohemia, and that it includes a rustic merrymaking. In it can be heard, too, the rhythm of the polka, the national dance for which Smetana wished to claim as important a place in music as Chopin had for the dances of his native country.