No one who has heard the central section, "Idyll," from Fibich's "V Podvecer" (variously translated as "Am Abend" or "At Twilight") will doubt that he was a composer of the very first rank. It is the sort of music that once heard one wishes at once to hear again - something that can be said of the work of very few composers indeed. Perhaps it can be called the "chocolate box" effect, and it sets Fibich on a level with Mozart.
And having noted the same quality in several other Fibich works - namely that none of them is at all ordinary, each one contains some particular new beauty and striking nobility not at first hearing evident but revealing itself only as familiarity increases - I have decided to investigate!
Fibich, who expired towards the end of 1900, was a most cultured man capable of enormous subtlety.
I do not propose long to dwell upon his 376 "Moods Impressions and Reminiscences" for pianoforte - which are really little more than a kind of daily jottings or journal - but shall concentrate upon his large-scale serious structures such as the three mature symphonies (of 1883, 1893, and - in E minor! - of 1898 - thus coming about a decade after those of Brahms), the fine series of symphonic poems which rivals that of Sibelius, and the late quintet for pianoforte, clarinet, horn, violin, and violoncello. I have acquired recordings of all the symphonies, most of the symphonic poems, and the quintet, and intend to report my experiences and findings in a subsequent message.
There is also a clutch of operas - "Hedy" for one is said to rival "Tristan and Isolde," and like that latter was influenced in its pessimism by Schopenhauer.
But beyond all this, Fibich also brought to the highest level of refinement two remarkable forms -
the stage melodrama and
the concert melodrama. He took the original concept from Schumann probably, and Elgar Delius Sibelius and Schoenberg to name just a few took it in turn from him. These orchestral works - about a dozen in all - altogether eschew - and in my view correctly - the whole idea of "song"!!! In them there are though we are told Leitmotifs everywhere in the manner of Wagner.
There are hundreds of songs too - just as many as we have from Brahms or Schumann.
Fibich's glorious music is much performed in his country of birth but far too seldom elsewhere. In general what a shame it is that the "standard repertoire" of composers - the "standard imagination" of concert promoters - is so restricted! That way much upon which great men have laboured long and hard will be forever lost to the world. Indeed a good many of Fibich's six hundred and twenty-two works have already been destroyed or lost during the sad and barbaric century which began a few years after his death.