Dvořák: Terzetto, Op. 74
During the winter of 1887, the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák shared his lodgings with a chemistry student and amateur violinist, Josef Kruis. A violist himself, Dvořák would sometimes play with his flatmate and his violin teacher, and in January of that year he spent a few days writing the Terzetto for Two Violins and Viola in C Major, Op. 74 for the threesome to play. Dvořák overestimated the violin student’s technical prowess, and eventually drew up the simpler Miniatures when the Terzetto proved too difficult for Kruis. Nonetheless, the Terzetto remains a valuable addition to the chamber music repertoire, one whose unconventional structure befits its unusual combination of instruments.
Dvořák marks the first movement Introduzione, and while expressive, it does carry the reservedness of a prelude, a sense that the work’s meatier moments are still on the horizon. While he never allows the movement to spill over into a fully-fledged emotional climax, Dvořák does achieve a formidably lush texture for his slim instrumental paintbrush as he pits the spaciousness of the main theme against scampering sixteenth notes in various voices. He slips seamlessly from this introduction into the second movement, a Larghetto that sways gently until the abrupt intrusion of sprightly dotted rhythms in the middle section shakes us out of our reverie. The hemiolic Scherzo proper dances in and out of the written triple meter with Bohemian angularity, but shirks its duple obstinance in the slower, more graceful Trio. Here, the augmentation of the original Scherzo figure to better suit the meter feels like a sleepier recasting of the same character, rather than a contrasting theme as is traditional.
The theme of the variations set that closes the work evokes an operatic overture in its huge range of expression and its orchestral organization: unison rhythms, fortissimo tutti declarations separating hushed, tiptoeing passages. Dvořák acknowledges this operatic connection in the Moderato variation, where he indulges the first violin in a wordless recitative atop quivering orchestral tremolos in the other voices. Afterward, the final two variations rush frenetically to a virtuosic finish.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for Chamber Music Northwest
During the winter of 1887, the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák shared his lodgings with a chemistry student and amateur violinist, Josef Kruis. A violist himself, Dvořák would sometimes play with his flatmate and his violin teacher, and in January of that year he spent a few days writing the Terzetto for Two Violins and Viola in C Major, Op. 74 for the threesome to play. Dvořák overestimated the violin student’s technical prowess, and eventually drew up the simpler Miniatures when the Terzetto proved too difficult for Kruis. Nonetheless, the Terzetto remains a valuable addition to the chamber music repertoire, one whose unconventional structure befits its unusual combination of instruments.
Dvořák marks the first movement Introduzione, and while expressive, it does carry the reservedness of a prelude, a sense that the work’s meatier moments are still on the horizon. While he never allows the movement to spill over into a fully-fledged emotional climax, Dvořák does achieve a formidably lush texture for his slim instrumental paintbrush as he pits the spaciousness of the main theme against scampering sixteenth notes in various voices. He slips seamlessly from this introduction into the second movement, a Larghetto that sways gently until the abrupt intrusion of sprightly dotted rhythms in the middle section shakes us out of our reverie. The hemiolic Scherzo proper dances in and out of the written triple meter with Bohemian angularity, but shirks its duple obstinance in the slower, more graceful Trio. Here, the augmentation of the original Scherzo figure to better suit the meter feels like a sleepier recasting of the same character, rather than a contrasting theme as is traditional.
The theme of the variations set that closes the work evokes an operatic overture in its huge range of expression and its orchestral organization: unison rhythms, fortissimo tutti declarations separating hushed, tiptoeing passages. Dvořák acknowledges this operatic connection in the Moderato variation, where he indulges the first violin in a wordless recitative atop quivering orchestral tremolos in the other voices. Afterward, the final two variations rush frenetically to a virtuosic finish.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for Chamber Music Northwest