Amy Nam, harp
student of Jennifer Swartz
audio recorded by Nataq Huault
Schulich School of Music, McGill University
May 2017
Vltava (The Moldau), arranged for harp by Hanuš Trneček, op. 43
Bedrich Smetana (1824–1884) trans. Hanuš Trneček (1858–1914)
After spending five years abroad in Sweden, Smetana returned to his home country of Czech with a renewed passion for creating and promoting nationalist art. A decade later, Smetana was finishing his symphonic poem cycle Má vlast (“My Fatherland”) shortly after suffering complete hearing loss in the latter half of 1874. Each of the cycle’s six movements bears the name of a culturally significant item pertaining to Czech geography or mythology. Streams of running notes and a lilting ó meter characterize the cycle’s second movement, Vltava (The Moldau) named for the river running through the Czech capitol Prague.
Smetana labeled the score’s sections as follows: “The source of the Moldau,” “Forest hunt,” “Farm wedding,” “Moonlit night, mermaid’s round dance,” “Old castle ruins,” “Moldau’s wide current,” “St. John’s Rapids,” and “The Moldau flows broadly.” The Czech composer-harpist Hanuš Trneček followed the original work’s form fairly closely in his transcription, except that he omitted the “Farm wedding” section (perhaps owing to the unsuitability of the section’s texture for the harp). Although the other sections remain faithful to the original in terms of thematic and harmonic content, the textures often spiral out into unashamed displays of virtuosic harp figuration. Trneček also caters to the harp’s idiosyncrasies by transposing the entire piece down a semitone from the original (E to E∫), allowing the harp to present a more resonant, open sound. Not only a demonstration of the harp’s textures and sonorities, Vltava showcases the diverse characters of the harp, from serenity to agitation to ecstasy.
