6 Slavonic Dances from Op.72

“It’s devilishly difficult to write the same thing twice over.” Eight years earlier – in 1878 when he was scarcely known outside Czechoslovakia – Dvorák had written a set of eight Slavonic Dances which his Berlin publisher Simrock had commissioned in the hope that they would be as successful as Brahms’s Hungarian Dances. In fact, Simrock had made such a profit out of Dvorák’s Slavonic Dances Op.46 that he now turned to the composer for more of the same, countering his reluctance to repeat himself by paying him ten times as much. Bearing in mind that, unlike Brahms in his Hungarian dances, Dvorák avoided ready-made tunes and insisted on creating his own melodic material, that kind of payment was not too much for a now well-known composer to ask.

Published like the first set of Slavonic Dances in versions for orchestra and for piano duet, the second set Op.72 betrays no hint of waning enthusiasm for the folk dance forms Dvorák so affectionately displays here. There is no sign of anything but effortless creative spontaneity. The first of them, based on the Slovak odzemek, is one of the most vigorous of all in its outer sections and one of the most abundantly melodious in the broader middle section. Like its equivalent in the first set, the second dance is based on the Ukranian dumka. Traditionally an expression of Slavonic melancholy, the dumka is interpreted by Dvorák in this case as a graceful and only slightly rueful dance offset by a more cheerful but no less graceful mazur middle section.

Up to this point, while the wind instruments have been by no means neglected, the scoring has tended to favour the strings. No.3 in E minor, a Bohemian skocna or reel, features flourishing woodwind answers to aggressive strings in the opening section, awards flute and oboe a melody as expressive as one already given to the violins and asks clarinet and bassoon to introduce the tune that leads to the accelerating ending. Brass instruments play a prominent part in No.5 in B minor where they add weight to the quick skocna sections that alternate with the slow, rather ponderous spacirká material with which it begins. Although it is headed Moderato, quasi minuetto, No.6 in B flat is actually a gracious Polish mazurka with some particularly attractive scoring for woodwind. The last and most colourful dance in the present selection is a reckless Serbian kolo which presents an abundance of unfailingly exhilarating melodic material brilliantly orchestrated.

Gerald Larner © 2010