About Josef Suk

Josef Suk was an extremely talented and versatile musician. As a violinist, he played in the famous Bohemian Quartet for forty years; as a composer, he wrote a number of large-scale symphonic works and symphonic poems, and as a pianist, accompanist and conductor his talents were sought on numerous occasions. But it is as a composer that he is perhaps best known: his Serenade for string orchestra, op. 6 and his Love Song (Pisen lásky) for piano have become established concert and recital works throughout the world. The piano was the medium through which he liked best to express his most intimate feelings, notably in the work About Mother (O matince), which he wrote for his young son in 1907, two years after the death of his wife (Dvorak's daughter), whom his child would never remember. In his work, his human and artistic personalities form a remarkable unity, sensibility being the most marked characteristic of both. On the receptive and the expressive sides alike he is always sincere and emotionally involved. The major component of his musical idioms is the Slavonic warmth and melting quality of his melody, its significant rhythms and the individual harmonisation and inventiveness of his polyphonic treatment.