Jan Martiník / bas, David Mareček / klavír

Program:
Bedrich Smetana
Evening songs
Antonin Dvorak
Evening songs op. 3
(selection: The stars, I dreamed, I am the knight, When God was most delighted)
Antonin Dvorak
Biblical songs op. 99

Prominent Czech bassist Jan Martiník, in collaboration with pianist David Mareček, will perform a selection from essential Czech song cycles of the 19th century, two of which are joined by a selection of texts from Vítězslav Hálk's collection of 65 love poems, Evening Songs (1859). Smetana dedicated them to his second wife Bettina in 1879, while Dvořák, a generation younger, probably set them to music in 1876 (but possibly even earlier) and dedicated them to the baritone of the National Theater Josef Lv. The texts of Dvořák's famous Bible Songs from 1894 draw from a completely different original, namely the Book of Psalms.