Last night the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (VSO) held their 23rd free concert in beautiful Deer Lake Park. Despite the rain, we took our chairs and picnic dinner and enjoyed a fantastic (if a little damp) performance. The VSO played a wide range of music, and finished off with their traditional finale for this concert, the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky. You can find a recording of this piece earlier in our blog by clicking here.
There was one piece that I particularly liked, though I was not incredibly familiar with it. The VSO played Bedrich Smetana's Die Moldau (or, in Czech, Vltava). This piece is part of his symphonic poem entitled Ma Vlast in which Smetana uses music to describe his homeland. Die Moldau describes the route that the Moldau river takes; it starts when the river is formed by two smaller streams, and continues to describe the river flowing through meadows, past the wedding of a farmer, past mermaids dancing at night, past palaces and castles, and finally as it flows off into the distance.
This is a great example of a composer creating a piece of music to try and paint a picture for his audience. I've included a recording of Die Moldau in this post. Enjoy!
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