Monday, February 15, 2010

Smetana - Má vlast (Vltava)

Finally figured out the title of this great piece. Even before I know it is about river flow i do have some river images in my head when I heard it. I read somewhere online that this music is about contrast and mergers. It's about warm and cold, happy and sad, calm and mad, female and male, day and night... anything that's the opposite of each other. These opposite quality things always go hand in hand, female can't do without male, day won't exist if there is no evening, and cold is the complement of warm. Human being's emotion, sad and happy, are also of the same kind.

in the composer Smetana's own words: The composition describes the course of the Vltava, starting from the two small springs, the Cold and Warm Vltava, to the unification of both streams into a single current, the course of the Vltava through woods and meadows, through landscapes where a farmer's wedding is celebrated, the round dance of the mermaids in the night's moonshine: on the nearby rocks loom proud castles, palaces and ruins aloft. The Vltava swirls into the St. John's Rapids; then it widens and flows toward Prague, past the Vyšehrad, and then majestically vanishes into the distance, ending at the Labe


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMV_rrRBgD8

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