Anna Lambke

Antonín Dvoráks music, imbued with the spirit of Bohemia, reflects a love of his native land. His String Sextet, written in the distinctive style which brought him international fame, was an immediate success at its premiere. Composed just eight years earlier, his String Quartet No. 4, unpublished until 1968, features pioneering, wild outer movements, highly unusual for the time, which foreshadowed the modernist innovations of composers decades later. A moving Andante religioso, which Dvorák made use of in future works, lies at its heart. The Polonaise exploits both the soulful and virtuoso character of the cello.

Marie-Martin Marcel de Marin (1796–1850) was a French composer who led both personal and professional lives that are worth reviewing today. He was a mathematician, an expat, the Captain of Versailles' Dragoons, a violinist and above all a composer. His harp compositions are very different from the repertoire of his contemporaries. His music features quite a peculiar mix of stylistic elements of various origins, including the heritage of the great Baroque composers and the early 18th-century style of French keyboard music. He succeeded in creating a language for the harp that was acclaimed as revolutionary during his lifetime and is still today worth rediscovering, revealing Marin to be a forerunner of a style that was found in harp music only at the beginning of the 20th century.

On this newest endeavour, the Bogotá Philharmonic Orchestra, under the direction of Joachim Gustafsson, turns its attention towards Danish composer August Enna (1859-1939) with renderings of two of his charming orchestral works. Traces of several elements from Enna’s musical life converge in the Violin Concerto: his background as a violinist and his deep connection to opera meet the tradition of Nordic national romanticism. While Symphony No. 2 may be considered conservative for its era, it is abundantly rich in its continuous melodic flow, creating an immediately impactful experience.