Duo Ardašev

Duo Ardashev
Renata Lichnovská and Igor Ardašev / four-handed piano

Program:
Bedrich Smetana
My homeland (arr. for piano for four hands)


Smetana began composing symphonic poems under the influence of Franz Liszt, the founder of this genre of program music. Just before starting work on his ambitious cycle of six symphonic poems with the collective title My Homeland, Smetana became permanently deaf. Nevertheless, he completed Vyšehrad in mid-November 1874 and Vltava three weeks later. In February 1875 he added Šárka to them and in October 1875 Z české luhů a hájů. After a four-year break, he completed the final two parts of Tábor and Blaník within four months. Even before their creation, Smetana created an arrangement of the first four poems for four-hand piano (he adapted the other two later). The reason for the creation of these arrangements was clearly economic – while only a few people could listen to his monumental cycle live, in the arrangement for four hands it could be played by any even slightly skilled amateur, of which there were not a few at the time. Today, when we have the opportunity to hear My Homeland at least once a year at the opening of the Prague Spring festival, it is all the more interesting to return in spirit to Smetana's time and listen to his work as most of the composer's contemporaries knew it.