Czech Philharmonic ⬩ Jakub Hrůša

At its 1914 premiere, The Oceanides by Jean Sibelius was called “the finest evocation of the sea ever produced in music”. Originally titled Rondo of the Waves, it is one of several works reflecting Sibelius’s fascination with nature.

Sibelius enjoyed improvising on the violin for the ocean and for birds while wandering through the countryside. To his disappointment, he did not become a virtuoso, but it was for the violin that he composed his only concerto: the Violin Concerto in D minor.

When Josef Suk was composing music for the fairytale drama Radúz and Mahulena in 1898, he was playing second violin in the Bohemian Quartet. “I was at work on the music in the woods at Dvořák’s summer home in Vysoká. There was an upright piano in the little room, and my girl Otilie was listening to me outside in the garden. It was springtime in my soul and in the music,” said Suk, recalling the happy period of the beginning of his relationship with Otilie Dvořáková, when he was writing the lyrical music for Zeyer’s play. Three years earlier, the young composer had based A Winter’s Tale on motifs from Shakespeare’s drama The Winter’s Tale.

Bohemian Tales (2020) happens to be the title of Augustin Hadelich’s fourth album. Besides chamber works by Leoš Janáček, Josef Suk, and Antonín Dvořák, it contains a recording of Dvořák’s Violin Concerto played by the American violinist in collaboration with Jakub Hrůša, who is at the moment completing a project to record Suk’s complete symphonic works with the leading Czech orchestra.