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Dvorak: Symphony No. 1 / Legends Op. 59, Nos. 1-5

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Dvorak: Symphony No. 1 / Legends Op. 59, Nos. 1-5

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Antonin Dvorak (1841 - 1904) Symphony No.1 in C Minor (The Bells of Zlonice) Legends Op. 59, Nos. 1 -5 Antonin Dvorak was born in 1841, the son of a butcher...

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Antonin Dvorak (1841 - 1904)

Symphony No.1 in C Minor (The Bells of Zlonice)

Legends Op. 59, Nos. 1 -5

Antonin Dvorak was born in 1841, the son of a butcher and innkeeper in the village of Nelahozeves, near Kralupy, in Bohemia, and some forty miles north of Prague. It was natural that he should follow the example of his father and grandfather by learning the family trade, and to this end he left school at the age of eleven. There is no reliable record of his competence in butchery, but his musical abilities were early apparent, and in 1853 he was sent to lodge with an uncle in Zlonice, where he continued an apprenticeship started at home, learning German and improving his knowledge of music, rudimentary skill in which he had already acquired at home and in the village band and church. Further study of German and of music at Kamenice, a town in northern Bohemia, led to his admission, in 1857, to the Prague Organ School, from which he graduated two years later.

In the years that followed, Dvorak earned his living as a viola-player in a " band under the direction of Karel Komzak which was to form the nucleus of i the Provisional Theatre Orchestra, established in 1862. Four years later Smetana was appointed conductor of the opera-house, where his Czech operas The Brandenburgers in Bohemia and The Bartered Bride had already been performed. It was not until 1871 that Dvorak resigned from the theatre orchestra, to devote more time to composition, as his music began to draw some favourable local attention. Two years later he married and early in 1874 became organist of the church of St. Adalbert. During this period he continued to support himself by private teaching, while busy on a series of compositions that gradually became known to a wider circle.

Further recognition came in 1875 with the award of a Ministry of Education stipendium by a committee in Vienna that included the critic Eduard Hanslick and Brahms. The following year Dvorak failed to win the award, but was successful in 1877. His fourth application brought the personal interest of Hanslick and Brahms and a connection with Simrock, the latter's publisher, who expressed a wish to publish the Moravian Duets and commissioned a set of Slavonic Daces for piano duet. These compositions won particular popularity. There were visits to Germany and to England, where he was always received with greater enthusiasm than a Czech composer would ever at that time have won in Vienna. The series of compositions that followed secured him an unassailable position in Czech music and a place of honour in the larger world.

Early in 1891 Dvorak became professor of composition at Prague Conservatory. In the summer of the same year he was invited to become director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York, a venture which, it was hoped, would lay the foundations for American national music. The very Bohemian musical results of Dvorak's time in America are well known. Here he wrote his Ninth Symphony, From the New World, its themes influenced, at least, by what he had heard of indigenous American Indian and Negro music, his American Quartet and a charming sonatina for violin and piano. In 1895 he returned home to his work at the Prague Conservatory, writing in the following year a series of symphonic poems and before the end of the century two more operas, to add to the nine he had already composed. He died in Prague in 1904.

Dvorak's nine symphonies span a period of nearly thirty years.

The first two were written in 1865, and the last in 1893. Both the numbering of the symphonies and the opus numbers assigned to them have caused some confusion. The first four symphonies were originally omitted from the list, so that the last five were numbered, although not in order of composition, the basis of the more usual numbering today. Opus numbers were also manipulated to some extent, a simple subterfuge to outwit Simrock by allocating earlier opus numbers to new compositions, on which he would otherwise have had an option.

The first surviving symphony by Dvorak, Symphony No.1 in C minor, was written in February and March 1865. It is said that the descriptive title The Bells of Zlonice was chosen by Dvorak himself, although it does not appear on the title-page, and it has been supposed that the title might have been used if the work was the one that the composer had entered for a competition in Germany and of which the score had thereafter been lost. To all intents and purposes the music was lost in the composer's life-time, bought in a Leipzig second-hand bookshop in 1882 and introduced to the public only long after his death, with performance in Brno in 1936. The title refers to the town in which Dvorak had his early schooling, and the imaginative have detected its bells in the opening of the first movement. The period of its composition coincided with the composer's unrequited affection for his piano pupil Josefina Cermakova of the Czech Provisional Theatre, whose sister, the contralto Anna Cermakova, he was to marry in 1873.

The symphony is scored for an orchestra that includes a piccolo, cor anglais, four horns, three trombones, trumpets and timpani, as well as the usual pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons, with strings. The work opens with an impressive introduction, leading to the Allegro principal section of the movement, in which an ominous enough theme leads eventually to a gentler melody that soon moves into further turbulence of feeling. The slow, movement, an A flat major Adagio, is introduced by woodwind chords, accompanied by plucked strings, followed by a finely drawn oboe melody and a strongly felt violin theme. This is followed by a scherzo, relaxing from its opening C minor into an E flat major section, its woodwind dominated passage leading to a passage of more lyrical mood, before the repetition of the opening section. The symphony ends with a brilliant finale in the necessarily triumphant key of C major, a movement with formal touches of counterpoint, reminiscences of what has passed, and more that a hint of the Zlonice bells audible, to those who wish to hear them, in the resonant notes of the French horns.

Dvorak started work on the Legends on 30th December 1880 and completed the set of ten pieces for piano duet on 22nd March in the following year. In November he set to work to orchestrate the pieces, at the request of the publisher Simrock, as he had the first set of Slavonic Dances

written three years before. The Legends

were dedicated to the critic Eduard Hanslick, and he and Brahms welcomed the pieces with some enthusiasm, as did the public. There was always a significant domestic market for piano duets, explored by Brahms in his Hungarian Dances

and by Dvorak first in his Slavonic Dances.

The period of composition of the Legends

closely followed the completion of the Sixth Symphony

and was immediately followed by work on the opera Dimitrij, and may in this sense, be seen as a momentary relaxation from the demands of the larger public forms.

The Legends have no overt programme. Lyrical in mood and relatively short, the ten pieces are evocatively Bohemian in character, imbued with the spirit of Dvorak's native country. Generally in tripartite form, sometimes extended by repetition, the series opens with a D minor Allegretto, moving forward to a gently lyrical second piece in G major, with a contrasting minor section. The third Legend is a lively Slavonic dance, framing a more tranquil central section in B flat major. The fourth of the set is the longest, opening with a march, moving into more characteristic musical territory, before reverting to thematic material that may seem particularly familiar to English listeners, through a fortuitous resemblance to a well known melody. In the fifth Legend some have detected a connection with religious pictures of the period.

Stephen Gunzenhauser

Stephen Gunzenhauser, a graduate of Oberlin College and the New England Conservatory, served Igor Markevich and Leopold Stokowski as assistant conductor before becoming executive and artistic director of the Wilmington Music School in 1974. In 1979, he became conductor and music director of the Delaware Symphony Orchestra. He records exclusively for Naxos and Marco Polo and his recordings include works of Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Vivaldi, Mozart, Gli�re, and Liadov. In 1989/90 he recorded all nine Dvorak symphonies with the Slovak Philharmonic, as well as the three Borodin symphonies with the Czecho-Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Disc 1

Symphony No. 1 in C minor, B. 9, "The Bells of Zlonice"

(more info)

Performed by: Royal Scottish National Orchestra Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra
Composed by: Antonin Dvorak
Conducted by: Stephen Gunzenhauser Neeme Jarvi Ivan Anguelov

I. Allegro - 13:56
II. Adagio molto - 14:58
III. Allegretto - 9:56
IV. Finale: Allegretto - 13:01

10 Legends, Op. 59, B. 122

(more info)

Performed by: Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra
Composed by: Antonin Dvorak
Conducted by: Stephen Gunzenhauser
Recording date: May 1991

No. 1 Allegretto - 3:31
No. 2 Molto moderato - 4:07
No. 3 Allegro giusto - 4:21
No. 4 Molto maestoso - 6:12
No. 5 Allegro giusto - 4:35

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Composer(s):
Dvorak, Antonin

Conductor(s):
Gunzenhauser, Stephen

Orchestra(s):
Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra; Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra

Label: Naxos Classics
UPC: 730099526623
Item Number: 8550266
Release Date: Dec 19, 1991