Photo: Barbora Navrátilová, Radio Prague International
Bedřich Smetana has been in the spotlight recently in connection with the 200th anniversary of the Czech composer’s birth. Smetana is also the subject of a new novel, Friedrich řečený Bedřich (Friedrich, Known as Bedřich), by Milena Štráfeldová. One focus of the book is the music great’s complicated German and Czech background.
Hundreds of earlier books have been devoted to Smetana, says writer Milena Štráfeldová, but there is still plenty of material about him that is not widely known. For instance, his diaries, which he began keeping aged 16, have never been published in full.
“What’s interesting is that he wrote them in German. And that could be one reason why people rather tiptoe around this issue. Because in reality how was it with his Czechness and his Germanness?”
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Author: Ian Willoughby