Thursday, June 30: an “American” Dvorak

“Something really melodious and simple”, this is how Antonín Dvořák described his string quartet, op. 96 also known as the “American”. Dvořák traveled by train to Spillville, happy to be with his 4 children and his wife again,as they were just arrived from Czechoslovakia. After the chaos of New York, being with his fellow compatriots in a rural environment, lead to the composition of his American Quartet, sketched in only three days! The American – that surely is the most famous among Dvorak’s fourteen quartets – shows Dvořák ‘a longing for harmony. The quartet just seems ” simple”, of course, references to American traditional sounds, as well as Slavic , are arranged in a remarkable complexity. The Quartet coach will be the internationally renowned cellist Antonio Lysy.