Ex. 11-10: Lasst mich allein

No. 1 of Dvořák's Vier Lieder (Four Songs, Op. 82), composed in 1887–88 to German poems by Ottilie Malybrok-Stieler. This song was a favorite of Josefina Čermáková — and behind it lay Dvořák's first, unreturned love. In 1865 he had taught her the piano and fallen for her, but she did not feel the same and married a count; Dvořák later married her younger sister, Anna, in 1873.

Decades later, this melody became a private memorial. While Dvořák was in America composing his Cello Concerto in B minor (Op. 104) in the winter of 1894–95, he learned that Josefina was gravely ill, and he used the song's melody in the slow movement. Josefina died in May 1895, soon after he returned home. In his grief, Dvořák went back to the finished finale and replaced its short ending with a long, quiet coda of about sixty bars, quoting the song once more — the solo cello singing it softly before the orchestra rises for the final bars.

Brahms, who had admired Dvořák's music from early on, was amazed by the concerto. He said: "If I had known one could write a cello concerto like this, I would have written one myself!"

The cellist Hanuš Wihan, to whom the concerto is dedicated, wanted it to end with a brilliant solo cadenza — a flashy showcase for the player. Dvořák refused. He wrote to his publisher that no one, "not even my friend Wihan," was to change a single note, and that there must be no cadenza. The premiere was eventually given by another cellist, Leo Stern, in 1896.

From the album Nox et solitudo by Eva Garajová and Marián Lapšanský (2014)
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