Má vlast: Vltava "The Moldau"

The piece follows the river's journey, and each stretch of water gets its own music. Two flutes, then clarinets, ripple upward to suggest the small springs that feed the Moldau at its source. These trickles merge into the famous flowing theme in the strings, a melody that arches up and down like moving water and returns throughout the piece. A horn call signals a forest hunt, heard briefly in the brass. The music then shifts to a rustic dance, a heavier peasant wedding tune with a lilting, off-balance rhythm. Things quiet down for a hushed, moonlit interlude: shimmering strings and woodwinds suggest water nymphs by night, one of the piece's stillest passages. The river theme returns, then builds suddenly as the orchestra depicts the St. John's Rapids, jagged brass and pounding low strings suggesting turbulent water and rocks. Emerging from the rapids, the river theme returns one last time, now broader and in triumphant major key, as the water widens toward Prague. Listen for a brief quotation of the Vysehrad theme, a stately fortress motif recalled from the cycle's first movement, as the river passes the ancient citadel. The work closes with two loud, decisive chords.

Smetana composed Vltava in 1874, the second of six symphonic poems making up Má vlast (My Homeland), written after he had become completely deaf. He described the piece in a letter as tracing the river from its two small springs through forests and meadows, past a peasant wedding, moonlit water nymphs, and the churning St. John's Rapids, before flowing broad and majestic past the Vysehrad fortress into Prague. The premiere took place in Prague in 1875, conducted by Adolf Cech. Vltava quickly became the most performed of the six poems and is now often played on its own outside the full cycle, a staple of orchestral programs and a widely recognized emblem of Czech national identity.