Adolf Míšek (1875–1955)

Sonata in E minor op. 6, for double bass and piano

Con fuoco
Andante cantabile – Animato – Tempo I
Furiant: Allegro energico; Trio: Molto tranquillo – Tempo I
Finale: Allegro appassionato

Prague’s iconic status as a cultural centre tends to obscure the reality of musical life in Bohemia. Far from being an exclusively metropolitan story, music as both a pastime and a professional occupation often owed its existence to the provinces. In fact, a majority of the musicians we have heard of, including the great Czech composers Smetana, Dvořák, Janáček and Martinů, came from villages or small towns in the countryside. In the later seventeenth century and the eighteenth this state of affairs was largely down to better musical education being available in the countryside. A network of village schoolmaster musicians and Jesuit seminaries provided a solid musical infrastructure; even in the nineteenth century strong musical institutions were only really established in Prague in the last fifty years.

This was very much the background experienced by Adolf Míšek (1875–1955). Born in the small Bohemian village of Modletín southeast of Prague, Míšek’s earliest musical training came from his musician father. Showing clear aptitude for the double bass he went at the age of fifteen not to Prague, but to the Vienna Conservatoire to study the instrument with the well-known performer and teacher František Simandl (1840–1912). Simandl, also a Czech, from the south Bohemian town of Blatná, had a distinguished career in both the Viennese Court Opera orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic. Míšek followed in his teacher’s footsteps playing in the Court Opera orchestra from 1898 to 1920 as well as teaching at the Vienna Conservatoire from 1910 to 1914. From 1920 to 1934 he was a leading member of the Prague National Theatre Orchestra under its often controversial conductor Otakar Ostrčil who did much to modernise the operatic repertoire including performances of Berg’s Wozzeck. Míšek spent the rest of his life in Prague working as a soloist and a much respected teacher.

Apart from his main activities as a performer and teacher, Míšek was also a composer. Alongside collections of songs and folksong arrangements were a number of chamber works including sonatas for violin and cello as well as a piano trio and two string quartets. Perhaps understandably given his professional career, his works for double bass have claimed the most attention. These include a Capriccio (1899), a Polonaise (1903), a piece entitled Legende (1903), various studies and sonatas for double bass including the Sonata in E minor recorded here.

The sonata is a big-boned work in four substantial movements. A mood of passionate engagement is clear from the start of the first movement and is also present in the finale. The double bass takes the lead and is rarely silent assaying an abundance of vigorous figuration. An elegant Andante is followed by a vigorous scherzo movement; with a nod toward his Bohemian roots, Míšek employs the excitable cross-rhythms of the ‘furiant’, a dance pioneered by Smetana in the first scene of the second act of The Bartered Bride and later much favoured in instrumental works by Dvořák.

Jan Smaczny