Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 7 hours ago

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Live recording from March 9th, 2025
Ying Xiao and Stefan Bötel

Hello dear music lovers,

this time I like to share a recording and piece that is very dear to my heart: The symphonic poem Vlatava (The Moldau) as a four hand piano version originally arranged by the composer himself in 1879.

The Moldau is really one of my most beloved pieces in music history. I always used to listen to the piece at my grandmas home on a cassette with a compilation of famous pieces conducted by Herbert von Karajan. Ever since I was a teenager I dreamed of performing the four hand piano version in a concert as I find it incredible how the piano can imitate the orchestra on the one hand while on the other hand emphasize certain parts of the music just differently than the orchestra.

I was really happy that my colleague Ying Xiao asked me to make a concert together where we could finally work on this gorgeous but also challenging piece of music. So I really hope that you enjoy this recording!


Má vlast: Symphonic poems by Bedřich Smetana

Má vlast (Czech pronunciation: [maː vlast]), also known as My Fatherland, is a set of six symphonic poems composed between 1874 and 1879 by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana. The six pieces, conceived as individual works, are often presented and recorded as a single work in six movements. They premiered separately between 1875 and 1880. The complete set premiered on 5 November 1882 in Žofín Palace, Prague, under Adolf Čech.

Má vlast combines the symphonic poem form, pioneered by Franz Liszt, with the ideals of nationalistic music of the late nineteenth century. Each poem depicts an aspect of Bohemia's countryside, history, or legends.

The works have opened the Prague Spring International Music Festival, on the 12 May anniversary of the death of their composer, since 1952.

Structure of the Symphonic Poem

Vyšehrad (The High Castle)
Vltava (The Moldau)
Šárka
Z českých luhů a hájů (From Bohemia's Woods and Fields)
Tábor
Blaník

Vltava

Vltava, also known by its English title The Moldau, and the German Die Moldau, was composed between 20 November and 8 December 1874 and was premiered on 4 April 1875 under Adolf Čech. It is about 13 minutes long, and is in the key of E minor. It is the most well known of the poems, often performed separately from the full work.

In this piece, Smetana uses tone painting to evoke the sounds of one of Bohemia's great rivers. In his own words:

The composition describes the course of the Vltava, starting from the two small springs, the Studená and Teplá Vltava, to the unification of both streams into a single current, the course of the Vltava through woods and meadows, through landscapes where a farmer's wedding is celebrated, the round dance of the mermaids in the night's moonshine: on the nearby rocks loom proud castles, palaces and ruins aloft. The Vltava swirls into the St John's Rapids;[n 2] then it widens and flows toward Prague, past the Vyšehrad, and then majestically vanishes into the distance, ending at the Elbe.

Vltava contains Smetana's most famous tune. It is an adaptation of the melody La Mantovana, attributed to the Italian Renaissance tenor Giuseppe Cenci, which, in a borrowed Romanian form, was also the basis for the Israeli national anthem Hatikvah. The tune also appears in an old Czech folk song, Kočka leze dírou ("The Cat Crawls Through the Hole"); Hanns Eisler used it for his "Song of the Moldau [de]"; and Stan Getz performed it as "Dear Old Stockholm" (possibly through another derivative of the original tune, "Ack Värmeland du sköna"). Horst Jankowski played a syncopated version of the tune on his easy listening hit, "A Walk in the Black Forest."

The piece is featured in Don Hertzfeldt's short film Everything Will Be OK (2006) and in Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (2011).