a world of music
A World
Conduct Your Own Tour
of Smetanaof Music
Museum
The Bedrich Smetana Museum in Prague in the Czech Republic.
By Jayne I. Hanlin
E
ver since 2001, when I made an
ersatz European conducting debut
in Prague, I have been eager to
return to the podium at the Bedrich
Smetana Museum. Arriving there
again, I eagerly climbed up the steps to the first
floor, bounded into the room of music stands,
stepped up and took my place on the platform.
I pressed the metal button on the electronic
baton and pointed it at the black box under the
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PAN PIPES Fall 2013 sai-national.org
music stand for The Moldau, the second tone
poem — and probably the most familiar and
loved — of Má Vlast (My Country). The recorded
music began and "followed" my beat, though
really that of Maestro Rafael Kubelik in one of his
five recordings. The river flowing by outside the
windows was the Moldau (or Vltava in Czech).
Visitors to this museum can choose to
lead a number of compositions by Smetana,
the Bohemian composer who lived between
1824 and 1884. That afternoon there was no
competition from anyone for the baton, so
A World
of Music
while I still had control, I pointed it to another
black box and continued the program. At the
conclusion, I received no thunderous applause,
just a thrill!
Smetana, the founding father of Czech
