I attended a high school orchestra concert recently – the group’s final concert of the year – and the teacher allowed seniors to select pieces they particularly enjoyed playing over the years to be part of the program. One student chose an abridged version of Tchaikovsky’s “Serenade for Strings,” a beautiful piece to be sure.
That made me wonder if other composers wrote “serenades” for strings, so I ran a Google search. Of course, Tchaikovsky’s work topped the list in the results of my search, but the second piece mentioned was Antonín Dvořák's Serenade for Strings in E Major so I picked that as the piece I would listen to this week. Perhaps I have heard this work before – most likely on the radio – as some of it did sound a bit familiar, and it is a decent piece. I did like it, but I can’t say that I did love it. Dvořák's Serenade is in five movements:
It is a pleasant enough piece, and descriptions for each of the movements can be found HERE. However, it really didn’t capture my attention or my desire to hear it again (last week, when I listened to Philip Glass’ Violin Concerto, I kept listening to that final movement over and over again). Dvořák's piece has some drama, but not like the emotion and force of the opening movement of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade. It has joy, but not like the jubilant strings of Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4. It has melancholy, but not like the Adagio by Samuel Barber. Dvořák's serenade is just – pleasant. A likable piece to listen to, but just a bit too “meh” for my taste.
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A New Hope:As the header above says, each week I will listen to a piece of classical music that I've never heard before, and then I will report out what I thought about it. Archives
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