The Dolci Show

Dolci Show #23: Dvorak’s Sonatina

August 29, 2020 Ted Rust and Viva Knight Season 1 Episode 23
The Dolci Show
Dolci Show #23: Dvorak’s Sonatina
Show Notes

Sonatina, opus 100                                                      Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) 

       I. Allegro risoluto
 
      II. Larghetto
       III. Scherzo
       IV. Finale 

Dvorak wrote this Sonatina for his teenaged son and daughter while living in America with his family for three years in the 1890s to study American folk music, with a goal of helping to create an American style of classical music. During his summers in the Czech-speaking prairie town of Spillville, Iowa, he composed four concert works on American themes: the symphony "From the New World," the "American" string quartet, the Cello Concerto, and this Sonatina. It opens with a quote from a Gold Rush song, "My Darling Clementine". The second movement is based on Native American chants and dances the family heard on a visit to Minnehaha Falls. The Scherzo suggests city park carousel music. The Finale, though a polka, is in the spirit of another rural hoe-down. 

This adaptation for oboe and piano was arranged by Dolci to fit within the range of an oboe and the respirational needs of an oboist.