Idyll for Strings - Leoš Janáček (SCORE)

0:00 I - Andante 3:46 II - Allegro 6:46 III - Moderato 9:41 IV - Allegro 12:42 V - Adagio 18:21 VI - Scherzo 21:21 VII - Moderato Leos Janácek’s second surviving large-scale instrumental work, the Idyll for string orchestra, was written by the 24-year-old composer in summer 1878 and completed on August 29. The work received its premier on December 15 of that year in Brno under Janácek’s direction and with Dvorák in the audience. Hopefully he was gratified to hear so much of his own music in Janácek’s, because while there are some reminisces of other composers in each of the Idyll’s seven movements, Dvorák was certainly the most frequent model. While some of this influence is no doubt owning to both composers’ common roots in Czech and Moravian folk music, the extent of Janácek’s borrowings from Dvorák are striking. The opening Andante has Dvorák’s sweetness-in-sadness in its opening tune. The second-movement Allegro has Dvorák’s lilting feel for triple-time. The third movement’s Moderato is a weightier piece that reaches past Dvorák to Mendelssohn for its stately sorrow, with traces of Dvorák’s string writing in the soaring violins. The central Allegro is indebted to the Scherzo from Dvorák’s Serenade for Strings, especially in its fiddle-like climax. The fifth movement’s Adagio is a Dumka in the Dvorák mold, with tragic tone in the interweaving of the cello and first violin melodies. The sixth movement is a Scherzo with tunes in imitation and counterpoint that recalls the first set of Dvorák’s Slavonic Dances. The closing Moderato is the only movement in the Idyll that bears only traces of Dvorák’s influence in its melodies, but Handel can be heard in the gravity of its opening and in its contrapuntal writing. Performed by the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra No Copyright Intended