Page "Bedřich Smetana" Paragraph 23

Smetana initially went to Gothenburg without Kateřina.

Writing to Liszt, he said that the people there were musically unsophisticated, but he saw this as an opportunity " for an impact I could never have achieved in Prague.

" Within a few weeks of his arrival he had given his first recital, opened a music school which was rapidly overwhelmed by applications, and become conductor of the Gothenburg Society for Classical Choral Music.

In a few months Smetana had achieved both professional and social recognition in the city, although he found little time for composition ; two intended orchestral works, provisionally entitled Frithjof and The Viking's Voyage, were sketched but abandoned.