LDV101

20 DVOŘÁK The four-movement structure of the Quartet op.96 opens with an Allegro non troppo whose opening bars have a certain kinship with Smetana’s Quartet ‘From My Life’, written twenty years earlier. It evokes the breath of spring in the open air and at the same time reveals – in the opening movement’s second theme, which begins ppp with a three-crotchet cell rising stepwise - an emotion reminiscent of the plantation songs that had so impressed him. Both its main themes are founded on the pentatonic scale (the black keys of the piano), a common basis for many Bohemian or African-American folksongs. Dvořák places particular emphasis on the sonorities of the lower instruments: it is the viola, an expression of his most personal voice, that introduces the famous opening theme, while he gives a privileged role to the cello’s high register in the recapitulation.