Smetana's Vltava, a portrait in music of the river that runs through the Czech Republic, is one of classical music's best-loved works, but it's only one movement of a set of six tone-poems gathered together as Má vlast ("my country") from the late 1870s. Spilling over with melody and painted with a fantastic array of orchestral colours, this is Smetana's masterpiece. His opera The Bartered Bride, with its popular overture, is a wonderful work, and his two string quartets are music of depth, the Second a harrowing evocation of a man losing his hearing.