Madtown Sounds: Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society

The one-of-a-kind chamber music series put on this summer by the Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society featured three concerts of music by Czech composers. The performances were superb—top-notch musicians playing with palpable excitement and enthusiasm. The programs included lots of gorgeous Dvořák (most notably the "American" String Quartet, Op. 97—composed in Iowa!; the Romance in F Minor, Op. 11; and "Silent Woods" for cello and piano, Op. 68). I also appreciated the introduction to some of the works of Vítězslava Kaprálová, the brilliant young composer who died from tuberculosis at the age of twenty-five shortly after fleeing Paris in advance of the Nazi invasion. The year before she died, she wrote a work for violin and piano titled "In Memoriam", subsequently retitled "Elegie", in remembrance of Karel Čapek, who had died the previous year. The "Elegie" is a short piece, but more than elegiac; the emotions the performance evoked for me were a wrenching combination of sadness and anger at the loss of Čapek. I could not imagine a more appropriate tribute to Čapek...or to Kaprálová, for that matter. But what I really want to say about the Czech festival is this: Zdenko Fibich, where have you been all my life? Zdeněk Fibich was a late 19th century Czech composer whose works haven't been performed or recorded as much as his contemporaries. I was blown away by the performance of his Quintet in D Major (Op. 42)...this work is intensely romantic without being excessively sentimental, and I simply did not want it to end. For more of the same, I've since picked up a collection of Fibich's piano pieces, which I have been listening to in between numerous return visits to the Quintet on CD.