A Rare Constellation for Household Friends

Chamber music is likewise fundamental to Antonín Dvořák’s musical thinking. His very first published work was a string quintet with two violas, thus emphasizing his own instrument. As a young musician finding his way, Dvořák played viola in a dance band and also occupied the principal viola chair in the theater orchestra of the new Provisional Theater in Prague (the theater that preceded the National Theater there).

In January of 1887, the Czech composer returned to chamber music after a hiatus of several years to write the Op. 74 Terzetto

This is a curious rarity even by the measure of the string trio, insofar as Dvořák scored it for two violins and viola rather than the standard grouping of violin, viola, and cello. The unusual constellation resulted from the amiable circumstance of the composer’s interaction with Josef Kruis, a musically inclined chemistry student who was subletting a room in the Dvořák household. Overhearing Kruis practice violin with his teacher, Jan Pelikan, prompted the composer to recall pleasant memories of years past as part of the National Theater orchestra (where Pelikan also played). He decided to write music for which he could dust off his viola and join the violinist pair.

Dvořák composed the Terzetto in just a little over a week. However, it proved to be beyond Kruis’s capacities, and he therefore prepared another set of miniatures for the trio. The title “Terzetto” is an old-fashioned term simply referring to a composition for three solo voices, with or without accompaniment. (In Italian, German, and some other languages, it applies specifically to a piece of vocal music, as opposed to an instrumental trio.) In the case of Op. 74, the lack of a bass voice gives a sweet flavor to the four-part work. The first movement is framed to play an introductory role. In lieu of a full-fledged sonata form, it compactly alternates lyrical and spirited material, leading directly into the affecting, expressive Larghetto in a magical E major, which similarly contrasts melodious with agitated music. Along with the Terzetto’s characteristically Dvořákian melos, Bohemian rhythmic impulses are apparent in the scherzo’s cross-rhythms. Folklike accents continue in the finale, which unfolds as a set of brief, dramatically contrasting variations that are shaded in the final pages by tonal ambiguity—is this C major or minor?