Josef Suk
Composer
1874 — 1935
The Czech composer and violinist Josef Suk is perhaps best-remembered as the son-in-law of his composition teacher Antonín Dvořák – whose daughter Otilie he married in 1898. But the Suk family were musicians in their own right, and Josef also received training from the composer Josef Foerster and the cellist Hanuš Wihan. His skill as a violinist complemented a natural flair for romantic melody, and his youthful Serenade for Strings (1892) was hailed as a masterpiece by Dvořák and Brahms alike.
Although he admired and sometimes emulated his teachers, Suk embraced a lyrical late-Romantic idiom in a series of expansive, richly orchestrated symphonic poems: Fairy Tale (1900), Praga (1904), A Summer's Tale (1909) and Ripening (1917). His masterpiece, however, is probably the epic and impassioned Asrael Symphony (1906), a heartfelt musical response to the sudden deaths of Suk's young wife, and of her father. Much loved in Czechia, since the fall of the Iron Curtain Suk's music has found a growing audience in western Europe – championed by conductors including Charles Mackerras and later Jiří Bělohlávek. His violin miniatures, and short orchestral works such as the Fantastic Scherzo (1903) and Meditation on the St Wenceslas Chorale (1914), are already concert hall fixtures.