Miniatures Op 75a (1887)

One of Dvorák’s neighbours in Zitna Street in Prague was a chemistry student and amateur violinist called Josef Kruis. It was for Kruis to play with his violin teacher and himself as violist that in January 1887 Dvorák wrote a rare score for two violins and viola, the Terzetto, Op.74. That work proved to be too difficult for Kruis, however, and a few days later, to compensate him for the disappointment, he wrote the four Drobnosti or Bagatelles for the same three instruments but with an easier second violin part. Although the Bagatelles were not performed in public in the composer’s lifetime, an arrangement for violin and piano, the four Romantic Pieces Op.75, won immediate currency, beginning with the first performance in Prague in March 1887.

Modest in construction and simple in texture, the Romantic Pieces rely for the most part on their melodic interest – which, in the case of the opening Allegro moderato is considerable. Like the other three pieces, the Allegro maestoso is based on just one theme, in this case a lively country dance, but differs from them in that the piano shares more than briefly in melodic exchanges with the violin. The Allegro appassionato begins in more or less the same way as the first piece but goes on to generate much passion in a double-stopped violin part. Most resourceful of all, in a way, is the Larghetto where Dvorák applies an extraordinary variety of harmonies and violin colours to wringing every last drop of pathos out of what is little more than a scrap of melody.   

The Miniatures Op 75a were written not only for the same three instruments but also for the same three instrumentalists - the amateur violinist Josef Kruis, his teacher Jan Pelikán, and the violist Antonin Dvorak - as the Terzetto Op 74. It is an indication of how different the two works are in texture, however, that the Miniatures lent themselves so readily to arrangement for violin and piano, as the Romantic Pieces Op 75, that they have become far more familiar in that form. Whereas in the Terzetto the three instruments interact on more or less even terms, in the Miniatures the first violin carries virtually all the melodic interest. So in scoring the Romantic Pieces all Dvorak had to do was to make a few small changes in the first violin part and rewrite the second violin and viola parts in piano-accompaniment terms.

The four Miniatures are as simple in form as they are in texture. Each movement is based on just one theme - a charmingly amorous melodic inspiration in the Cavatina, a Czech dance tune in the Capriccio, a passionate song in the Romanza and a fragment of operatic recitative in the Elegia. Although he evidently felt that the violin-and-piano version required some minor structural changes, the one movement that could have given him any problem from the textural point of view was the last, where the piano could not be expected to sustain the harmonies so patiently and so effectively offered by second violin and viola in support of the sobbing vocal line on first violin.