Moravian Duets Op.32

Ich schwimm dir davon

Fliege, Vöglein

Wenn die Sense scharf geschliffen wäre

Freundlich lass uns scheiden

Der kleine Acker

Die Taube auf dem Ahorn

Wasser und Weinen

Die Bescheidene

Der Ring

Grüne, das Gras

Die Gefangene

Der Trost

Wilde Rose

The publication of the thirteen Moravian Duets Op.32 in Germany in 1878 was a turning point in Dvorák’s career. They had been published before but only in a very limited Czech-language edition and they would have made little impression on the musical world at large had not the young composer sent them to Brahms, who generously recommended them to his own publisher, Fritz Simrock, in Berlin. Simrock was cautious about accepting them - Dvorák was scarcely known out side Czechoslovakia at the time - and could initially offer the composer no payment for them. They proved to be so popular in their new German translation, however, that, in the hope of repeating the success he had had with Brahms’s Hungarian Dances, he promptly asked Dvorák for a set of Slavonic Dances. Published a few months later, they made the composer’s international reputation more or less overnight.

Dvorák’s source for the duets was Frantisek Susil’s extensive edition of Moravian folk songs which, as he got to work on arranging them for the Prague merchant and music-lover Jan Neff, so inspired him that he produced what must have been the most captivating and most imaginative collection of soprano-and-alto duets written up to that time. They are remarkable not only for the obviously spontaneous delight Dvorák takes in his material but also for his technical virtuosity in sustaining a wide variety in treatment and texture through the whole series. The delightful opening number, Ich schwimm dir davon, might owe a little to Mendelssohn’s Maiglöckchen und die Blümelein but is just as resourceful in the sprightly interweaving of the vocal lines while making a special feature of teasing fluctuations in tempo. Few of the Moravian Duets hold the two voices in rhythmic unison but those that do introduce another diversion, like the piano’s birdsong imitations in Fliege, Vöglein or the fleeting dance rhythms in the second stanza of Wenn die Sense scharf geschliffen wäre.

While keeping a light touch in his arrangements, Dvorák is not insensitive to emotional issues, like the differing attitudes of the girl and the boy in Freundlich lass uns scheiden. The piano’s dramatic intervention in Die Taube auf dem Ahorn is not to be taken seriously but the characterisation of the mysteriously unhappy girl in the exchanges of Wasser und Weinen is sensitively done. Die Bescheidene is another dialogue with the two voices brought together at the end. Although quick tempi and vigorous dance rhythms tend to predominate, as in Der Ring and Grüne, Du Gras (both of them carrying further echoes of Mendelssohn), the more serious attitude adopted in the last three numbers gives the collection just enough depth to offset the more capricious items that precede them.

Gerald Larner ©2005