This article was updated in September 2024.
Can you introduce yourself, and talk about your current musical role and responsibilities?
My name is Eva Krestová, and I am the principal violist of the Czech Philharmonic, and a member of the Josef Suk Piano Quartet. In the past, I played second violin in the Pavel Haas Quartet.
What particular abilities are required in your position, both generally and more specifically in Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony?
In my position, it is very important to be able to lead the viola section so we play together as well as possible, while also trying to adapt to what other sections are doing, to discover when things aren’t together promptly, and to react immediately, making clear motions to show my colleagues how to proceed. There is also the ability and duty to play a solo if the composition so requires. But the main thing is the ability to connect to the conductor and to try to enter into his musical world.
In Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony, the most important thing is to listen to all the solo instruments. Almost the entire viola part is accompanying, so we constantly have to adapt and support what other instruments are expressing.
Do you remember the first time you performed Dvořák’s Ninth? What impression did the work make on you?
I remember the first concert when I had a chance to play the New World Symphony. It was relatively late because I only began playing in orchestras a few years ago. All my life, I had devoted myself mainly to playing chamber music, but the experience was all the greater for me. I already knew the New World Symphony, of course, and I think everybody in this country knows it! But for me personally, playing it was a much more intense experience. I felt fulfilled. Finally, I could begin calling myself a real Czech musician!
What is your reference version of this work – either a recording or the memory of a performance?
I always prefer live concerts and live performances. For me, there is no substitute for seeing the emotions radiating from the musicians. A recording can be amazing, but I always have a greater experience from live concerts.
Do you have a favourite passage in the work?
I probably don’t have a favourite movement because I enjoy absolutely all of them. If I had to choose, I would probably say the famous solo for English horn played by my colleague Vojta Jouza – one truly never tires of hearing it!
In performing Dvořák’s Ninth, what do you find most difficult? How do you overcome this difficulty?
This symphony is not technically difficult for the viola section, the main thing that is really important is to listen and try to fit in well. What is harder is playing the piece with the right expression: every note, even one that is not audible, is important. Just one spot occurs to me that is awkward and quite audible – that’s the end of the third movement. The viola rhythm changes from sextuplets to quintuplets, then quadruplets and finally triplets, all while slowing down slightly. It’s really extremely difficult for the whole section to stay together, and it doesn’t always come off.
For quintuplet and quadruplet rhythms, I have a little mnemonic device of my own, and it is also helpful when the conductor shows the beat accurately, and I involve myself in it as needed, trying to show it clearly to the others.
Do you have any advice for musicians performing Dvořák’s Ninth for the first time?
I have just one piece of advice: enjoy it as much as you can – I’m sure it will be something you will never forget!
Can you tell us an anecdote about this work, or an amusing or unexpected moment?
It is well known that Dvořák wrote the New World Symphony in America, and it was a huge success. After the premiere, the musically educated New York public felt it had just heard a musical highpoint, some of the best of symphonic music of all time. In writing it, Dvořák had taken inspiration from various elements and from folk music native to America along with the overall atmosphere of America’s tempestuous development, but more than anything else, it is here (in the second movement) that Dvořák expresses his longing for his homeland.
Besides that, like many other Europeans, Dvořák could never understand slavery and the persistent racism in the New World. Maybe that feeling is audible somewhere in the notes of the New World Symphony… I remember a story that I read, as told by Zdeněk Mahler, a prominent European historian of the arts: once, when a certain American was telling Dvořák about how the white race was superior to the others, Dvořák answered him in Czech at the top of his lungs: “Bullsh...!”
Why should one come to hear a performance of Dvořák’s Ninth?
Because to me, it is like knowing the Bible: it is our culture, our history – everyone should know what it is about. The New World Symphony is possibly the most famous symphony of all, and it is music that we are proud of. And as a Czech musician, I feel the duty and responsibility to pass it on. The symphony has no weak spots – every bar is perfect and beautiful. Even little children like it, and I don’t know anybody who would not fall in love with this symphony and who would not have a beautiful experience listening to it. And that is just what we need in today’s world with all the bad, catastrophic things that are happening – we need to spread the beauty that still remains in us as much as possible.
See all forthcoming performances from the Czech Philharmonic.
This article was sponsored by the Czech Philharmonic.
