Vítězslav Augustín Rudolf Novák - Concerto in E minor for Piano and Orchestra (1895), Jan Bartoš (piano), Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Jakub Hrůša (conductor)
The concerto is in a single movement yet divided into three separate sections.
I. Allegro Energico - 00:00 -------
II. Andante Con Sentimento - 10:38 ------
III. Allegro Giusto - 17:58
Vítězslav Augustín Rudolf Novák (5 December 1870 - 18 July 1949) was a Czech composer and pedagogue. Stylistically, he was part of the neo-romantic tradition, and his music has been occasionally considered an early example of Czech modernism. He was a pupil of Dvořák in Prague, and one of the young composers, alongside Suk and Janáček, who joined a group of artists and writers to publish a “Czech manifesto of modernism” in 1895.
In 1889 when Vítězslav Novák won a scholarship to study law at the Charles University in Prague, his heart was already set on studying music; and, therefore, he also enrolled at the Prague Conservatory. Here he studied music: piano, harmony, and counterpoint. In 1891 Novak was accepted into the Master School of Antonin Dvořák under whom he studied composition. By that time, he was also able to persuade his mother that he had to pursue a career in music rather than in law.
In 1896 Vítězslav Novák visited Lachian region (at the Moravian-Slovak border) and Slovakia and began to absorb the great folk music tradition of those areas. It was a turning point in his music which began to attract attention. By the early years of the twentieth century he was already a successful composer who had written masterpieces such as the symphonic poems In the Tatra Mountains (1902), Slovak Suite (1903), his most popular composition, and Eternal Longing (1904).
In 1908 he succeeded Dvořák as professor of composition at the Prague Conservatory. More acclaimed compositions followed, including the symphonic poem Toman and the Nymph of the Woods (1907), and the cantata Storm (1908-10).
In spite of declining popularity of the late romantic movement in music after WWI, Vítězslav Novák remained an important personality in Czech musical life. His Master School, established at the Prague Conservatory in 1919, was eagerly sought out by a new generation of Czech composers. Following somewhat less successful excursions to the world of opera and ballet during the twenties, Novák returned to symphonic music with his mature works Autumn Symphony (1934), South Bohemian Suite (1936-7), De Profundis (1941), and May Symphony (1943), which was to be his last.
Novák's piano concerto dates from 1895 but did not receive its first performance until 1915 when it was given by Anna Praskova, Novák's sister-in-law. Novák had planned to crown his piano studies at the Paris Conservatoire with a performance of his concerto but, in the end, he abandoned the idea. In his memoirs he wrote: "The more I practised the concerto, the more distasteful it became to me…. So I decided not to play that monstrosity". Novák did not allow it to be performed for almost 20 years. Certainly there’s not much sense of individuality about what is a generic late-Romantic piano concerto, indebted to Liszt and Tchaikovsky, as well as, inevitably, to Dvořák, and at that first performance the critics concurred with the composer's judgement. But modern audiences have since endured far greater musical "monstrosities" than Novák's piano concerto, so was inclined to be more generous: this is an excellent concerto and an unjustly neglected work.
In May 2021, Bartoš’s recording with Maestro Jakub Hrůša and Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra of Vítězslav Novák’s - Piano Concerto, Toman and the Wood Nymph won the Czech Republic’s “Grammy®” 2020 Best Classical Album Ceny Anděl Coca-Cola Awards (Prize in Classical Music, Album of the Year).