Thursday, April 9, 2009

A Dvorak family album


I have found this great Dvorak Web site. It is all in Czech but still.

The site is full of photographs of the Dvorak family. Above is a picture of Dvorak's daughter Otilie and her husband, the composer Josef Suk. For the record that is one romance I am kind of sick of hearing about, how Dvorak's daughter married Josef Suk. They have been talking about it practically nonstop on our classical music station since I was 17. But I do love Suk's String Serenade. And I do not remember ever seeing this picture of them.

You sort of have to deduce who is who in this site because, as I said, it is all in Czech. But you can make pretty educated guesses.

"skladatelovy dcery Anna, Otylka a Magda," reads the caption for this picture. Clearly that translates to: "Back then kids behaved."


This appears to be Otilie with her son, the next Josef Suk.


Otilie's son Josef Suk, the baby in that picture, is the father of the violinist Josef Suk. Other than that, I wonder what he did with his life. Did music skip a generation?

I love this picture of the Dvorak family relaxing.


And here is a sweet picture of the old man.


Another sweet picture.


To complete the nostalgic picture, here is "Songs My Mother Taught Me."

The old man, he could sure write.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the Flagstad performed "Songs My Mother Taught Me". I don't know of any other composer who could be so poignant in a major key. Do you know the Biblical Songs? I encountered them by accident many years back when I was organist in a Baptist church. A soloist brought one of them in. The text is "The Lord Is My Shepherd" and Dvorak's setting is chaste and moving.

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