Zdeněk Fibich

With his command of orchestral drama and a highly individual melodic gift, Zdeněk Fibich was perhaps the most important Czech composer of the second half of the 19th century after Smetana and Dvořák. Born in northern Bohemia in 1850, he studied in Leipzig with Moscheles and in Mannheim, where he saw an early performance of Wagner’s 1868 opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. His own music seeks to combine his formal training with inspirations from other arts and nature, Wagner’s harmonic innovations and a sprinkling of indigenous Czech styles, although he was never a nationalist along the lines of Smetana. Many of his operas set Czech stories, and as well as three symphonies, he composed a number of symphonic poems and illustrative overtures. He also wrote hundreds of miniature character pieces for piano, many inspired by a passionate affair with Anežka Schulzová, one of his piano pupils. One of these, “Poème” (1893), has become his best-known work in a posthumous violin-and-piano arrangement. Fibich died in 1900 in Prague.