The Leading Classical Music Label Direct To You

Read reviews, listen to the music, and purchase the COMPACT DISC Dvorak: Symphony No. 2 / Legends Op. 59, Nos. 6-10

Customer Service Toll Free 866.489.4152

Flash 9 required. Click to download.

Narrow your search
with our Music Browser

Classical Music

        Ballet
        Chamber Music
        Choral
        Concertos
        Film Music
        Folk Legends
        Instrumental
        Musicals
        Opera / Operetta
        Orchestral
        Vocal

Jazz

Jazz Contemporary
Jazz Icons

New Age

Wind Band

World

        Ballad
        Bhuddist
        Chinese Music
        Classical (World)
        Early Music (World)
        Folk
        Gamelan
        Gypsy
        Hindustani
        Jazz (World)
        Klezmer
        Sufi
        Vocal (World)
        World

Special Offers:

Free MP3 Downloads

A Special Offer for Valentines

Catalogs

Internship Opportunities

Celebrating Black History

Masters of American Music

53rd Annual Grammy� Award Winners

Clearance

Penguin Guide

200 Essential Recordings

Recently Released

Upcoming Releases

SACD

DVD

        Ballet DVD
        Classical Concert
        Classical Documentary
        Dance Documentary
        Opera DVD

Audio Books

        Anthologies / Collections
        Arts
        Biographies
        Children's Classics
        Classic Fiction
        Great Epics and Tales
        History
        Junior Classic Fiction
        Junior History
        Literature
        Music Biographies
        Music Education
        Non-Fiction
        Philosophy
        Plays - Others
        Plays - Shakespeare
        Poetry
        Religion
        Samplers
        Sports
        Wine Guide

NaxosDirect Podcasts

Video Librarian Reviews

Labels

Naxos Label

        Naxos American Classics
        Naxos Best Of...
        Naxos Box Sets
        Naxos Cinema Classics
        Naxos Classics
        Naxos DVD
        Naxos DVD-Audio
        Naxos International
        Naxos Jazz
        Naxos Limited Edition
        Naxos Milken Archives
        Naxos Night Music
        Naxos Opera
        Naxos Orchestral
        Naxos Special Release
        Naxos Wind Band Classics
        Naxos World

Composers

Conductors

Ensembles

Orchestras

Choirs

Artists

Instruments

Producers

Dvorak: Symphony No. 2 / Legends Op. 59, Nos. 6-10

Home

Classical Music

Orchestral

Dvorak: Symphony No. 2 / Legends Op. 59, Nos. 6-10

View large image

$9.99 (COMPACT DISC)

In Stock - Usually ships within 24 hours.

Link to this COMPACT DISC Link to this page

Antonin Dvorak (1841 - 1904) Symphony No.2 in B Flat Major Legends Op. 59, Nos. 6 - 10 Antonrn Dvorak was born in 1841, the son of a butcher and innkeeper...

Read more about this recording

Antonin Dvorak (1841 - 1904)

Symphony No.2 in B Flat Major

Legends Op. 59, Nos. 6 - 10

Antonrn 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 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 orginist of the church of St. Adalbert. During this period he continued to support himself by private teaching, while busy on aseries of compositions that gradully 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 Dances 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.

Dvorak's Second Symphony, in B flat major, was written in the autumn of 1865, separated from the earlier symphony by the composition of the song-cycle Cypresses. It is scored for the same forces as its predecessor and is again in the usual four movements. The circumstances of composition were, as before, straitened. Dvorak was first viola in the Theatre Orchestra, leading a section of two players. His meagre income allowed him enough to share a room with a group of colleagues and friends, one of whom had a piano, an instrument he had been too poor to afford himself. The symphony was performed once in the composer's life-time, in 1888, in a revised version.

While some have seen a connection between Dvorak's C minor Symphony and Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, in the same key, others have detected a resemblance between the B flat major Symphony and Beethoven's Pastoral, if only one of mood.

At the same time it is possible to detect an overt Wagnerian aspect to the work, in its harmonies and in its treatment of climaxes. The first movement is rich in melodic invention and displays the composer's command of the orchestra and Bohemian use of the wind instruments, which often assume prominence.

The slow movement is in G minor, gently evocative, the first of its three sections dominated by a gradually unwinding violin melody. There is an unexpected contrapuntal interruption of the lyrical flow of the music and a dramatic climax, as the trumpets introduce the return of the first section with a fanfare. The relative stillness of night is to be disturbed again before all is finished. This, the longest movement of the symphony, is followed by the scherzo, the introduction to which provides a slow transition to a principal melody of particular charm and music of marked contrast, before there is a shift to A major for the trio section of the movement. The sound of the scherzo melts away and the violas, in the least flattering part of their register, are entrusted with the sinister opening of the finale, which proceeds at once to something more cheerful, although the movement is not without darker touches.

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 Legends, 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. The sixth introduces an element of romantic drama, gent I y relaxed in the central section and final bars. The seventh, an Allegretto grazioso in A major, has an element of caprice in its opening rhythm, moving to a livelier middle section. There follows a pastoral F major Legend, the opening bars of which, at least, recall a Chopin Ballade, as some critics have noted. The ninth employs a Bohemian dance form and the series ends with a gently idyllic B flat major Andante, momentarily increasing in tension, before an evocative horn solo, which for the moment restores something of the original mood, and the wistful conclusion.

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. 2 in B flat major, Op. 4, B. 12

(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 con moto - 15:57
II. Poco adagio - 14:57
III. Scherzo: Allegro con brio - 11:58
IV. Finale: Allegro con fuoco - 11:03

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. 6 Allegro con moto - 5:17
No. 7 Allegretto grazioso - 2:51
No. 8 Un poco allegretto e grazioso - 4:04
No. 9 Andante con moto - 2:41
No. 10 Andante - 4:19

Reviews

Be the first to review this title

FREE SHIPPING on orders
of 5 items or more!

Earn Naxos Rewards Points by opening an account and buying your favorite music today! Create your account here.

See all of our great site features here.

Flash 9 required. Click to download.

Composer(s):
Dvorak, Antonin

Conductor(s):
Gunzenhauser, Stephen

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

Label: Naxos Classics
UPC: 730099526722
Item Number: 8550267
Release Date: Dec 19, 1991