NorviK

Wind Music

Romance from Pohadka

Josef Suk

arranged by Tony Turrill for viola and wind decette

Solo Viola and 2Fl./2Ob./2Cl../2Bsn./2Hn.

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Suk was born in Krecovice, Czechoslovakia, in 1874, the son of the village schoolmaster and organist. He studied the violin and composition at Prague Conservatory from 1885 to 1892, where he became the favourite  pupil, a family friend  and later son-in-law of Antonin Dvorak

Suk never wrote an opera but the next best thing was his incidental music for a play based on a Slav fairy tale.  Recognizing that it was unlikely that the play would be given repeat performances, Suk salvaged most of his music by producing a four movement orchestral suite, Pohadka. The work is a story of requited love and as its first performance dates from the same period, its generally sunny ambience reflects the happy year of the wedding of Suk and Otilka, Dvorak daughter.  The violin melody is the motto theme which is assigned to Prince Raduz and Pricess Mahulena, the two lovers of the fairy story (Ein maerchen), Suk labels the movement “Lovely lady with the violin”.  As in  many fairy stories, when Raduz’s father the benevolent King dies, the lovers fall foul of the wicked Queen Mother Mahulena who turns her daughter into a poplar tree and destroys Raduz’ memory.  Love finally overcomes the spell, Raduz chops down the tree and releases the princess and the melody of the first movement returns.    As well as teaching and composing, Suk was a violinist and played second violin in the renowned Ceske String quartet which dated from his student days. The first movement of the suite is basically a romance written for him to perform, for Violin and Orchestra.

In this arrangement, much of the score has been left unchanged, the solo violin part is exactly as written by Suk except it has been reset from violin to viola firstly because  this seemed to offer a better balance with the resulting register of the  wind instruments and secondly simply  because the arranger loved hearing a viola play such a romantic melody and finally most importantly so did his late wife.   Judge for yourself, it only takes a little over 9 minutes

Click here to buy the pdf files for £16

make a note of the  ref. no. NM2102; used with the composer and title it will help identify the work 

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Click here to buy the sheet music for £25

This takes you straight to the right page in June Emerson Wind Music. Just check out there. Emerson’s will then print and dispatch the music

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