An important challenge for Czech composers during the nationalist period was to decide how much to champion the natural melodies of their homeland and how much to yield to the dominant German symphonic tradition. While Bedrich Smetana flourished using Bohemian melodies in tone poems, Antonin Dvorák managed to incoporate them effectively into the received structures. Zdenek Fibich, twenty-six years younger than Smetana and nine years younger than Dvorák, followed Dvorák's path. His First Symphony, written during and after studies in composition at Leipzig, strikes a pleasing balance between the Bohemian character of much of its melodies and orchestration and the German organization Fibich employs. The Allegro moderato first movement is a good example of this balance. The first theme, played by glistening flutes and then gentle brass over shimmering string figurations, is quite reminiscent of a more famous moment in Smetana's Vltava. Yet it and the bolder second them soon find themselves in a quite conventional sonata-form structure. The two themes establish a pastoral atmosphere that not even a surprisingly emphatic development section can entirely dispel. Fibich's second movement Scherzo begins with music that would not sound out of place in Schumann's oeuvre, but its trio is a true polka, whose duple time contrasts with the triple time of the scherzo. Unexpectedly embedded in the polka, however, is that mainstay of German academic composition, a fugato. The slow third movement, subtitled "Alla romanza," finds Fibich in more personal voice. The movement begins with Fibich using the harp to great effect, as Smetana did in Ma vlast, and moves on through a series of somber phrases. A happier, wistful theme enters later, but then an elaborated version of the opening music appears to close the movement. The finale, by contrast, blazes with energy from its opening violin runs. It takes an irrepressibly energetic main theme and runs it through a loose rondo form. Fibich has a little fun by inserting two coda-like passages in this finale before the real coda arrives; after the second false ending comes a tender string passage that ends in a short reprise of the first movement's main theme. The music then moves on to a triumphant conclusion. Fibich's music can be recommended to anyone who responds to Dvorák or Smetana. His First Symphony, despite its occasional academic touches, is quite charming and inventive.

© Andrew Lindemann Malone, All Music Guide