Did you know that every decade, places all over the world celebrate the music of Czechia for an entire year? This tradition started exactly 100 years ago for the 100th birthday of Bedřich Smetana, and since then performances from New York to Tokyo have commemorated the year-long event. No place celebrates it more than the capital, Prague, where operas, symphony concerts and jazz festivals are held throughout the year.
If you can’t travel the 4,000 miles to Prague, don’t despair! Tonight, the Bennewitz Quartet will be performing right in our backyard at the Jorgensen Center. This award-winning quartet has been performing across Europe for their 25th anniversary tour. Their performance tonight will be the first concert of the North American leg of the tour and will be followed by performances in cities such as Los Angeles and Vancouver.
The quartet was founded in Prague and named after Antonín Bennewitz, a central figure in the development of Czech violin pedagogy. As an ensemble, they focus on playing music from their home country and bringing it to different parts of the world. In the spirit of this, they will perform an all-Czech program tonight, featuring works from composers Erwin Schulhoff, Leoš Janáček and Antonín Dvořák.
Schulhoff was a composer who lived during the beginning of the 20th century and experienced much of the strife associated with it. He took inspiration from many sources such as jazz rhythms from America and impressionist styles from people like Claude Debussy. He also incorporated artistic movements such as Dadaism into his music.
Born to a Jewish family, Schulhoff’s music was banned by the invading Germans during World War II, and since then his musical legacy has been largely unrecognized. The Bennewitz Quartet will aim to give his music the recognition it deserves by playing his “5 Pieces for String Quartet” tonight.
Janáček is a large figure in Czech national music. He incorporated stylistic elements from folk music and made melodies that exhibited similarities with the speech patterns of the Czech language. His “String Quartet No. 2, ‘Intimate Letters’” embodies the emotions he poured into over 700 letters to a woman he fell in love with and turns them into four movements that retell the four phases of his relationship with her.
If you’ve heard of any Czech composer, you’ve likely heard of Dvořák. Even if you haven’t heard his music directly, you’ve probably heard John Williams’ “Jaws” theme, which was virtually lifted from the beginning of the fourth movement of Dvořák’s 9th Symphony. Dvořák is a titan of Czech national music and aided in the creation of a new American symphonic style. His dedication to his country’s musical sound led him to contribute the most significant effort to the creation of the Czech national style and inspired him to ponder what an American sound would be like. His 13th String Quartet, which will be performed tonight, is a work that references his time in the United States by calling back to the works he wrote here. His previous quartet, named “American,” and his 9th Symphony, “New World,” are both referenced in this work in the last movement. Just as this work closes Dvořák’s American period, so too will it conclude tonight’s program.
If any of this interests you then be sure to come tonight! The music starts at 7:30 p.m. with a pre-concert lecture starting at 6:30 p.m. if you want to learn more about tonight’s music. Thanks to the Lenard Chamber Music Endowment Fund, all students with valid UConn IDs can attend the concert for free.