Ah, how sweet the coffee tastes...

Dvorak's "Slavonic Dances" have remained among the world's most popular works, which only goes to show what influenced Brahms to say that he would "be glad if something occurred to me as a main idea that occurs to Dvorak only by the way." Proving that Bach had a sense of humor is his "Coffee Cantata," which pits a stern father against a coffee-addicted daughter who won't obey his injunction to stop drinking the stuff. Who do you think wins? And so charmingly, too, especially as sung by Emma Kirkby! The swing and élan of Ervin Schulhoff's 1930 work for alto sax and piano, the "Hot Sonata," gives no hint of his tragic death in the Wulzburg concentration camp in 1942.
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