Dvorak: Overtures

Description

Antonin Dvorak (1841 - 1904) Vanda In Nature's Realm, Op. 91 Carnival, Op. 92 Othello, Op. 93My Home, Op. 62 Antonin Dvorak must be consideredthe greatest of the Czech nationalist composers of the nineteenth and early twentiethcentury, and he certainly enjoys the widest international popularity. His achievement wasto bring together music that derived its inspiration from Bohemia's woods and fields withthe classical traditions continued by Brahms in Vienna.Dvorak was born in 1841 in a villageof Bohemia, where his father combined the trades of inn-keeper and butcher, which it wasexpected that his son would later follow. As a child he played in his father's villageband, his early training as a violinist in the hands of the village schoolmaster.Schooling in Zlonice, where he was sent at the age of twelve, lodging with an uncle,allowed instruction in the rudiments of music from Antonin Liehmann. Two years later hewas sent to Kamenice to learn German, but the following year the needs of his family madeit necessary for him to return to Zlonice, where his parents had now settled, to help inthe butcher's shop. Liehmann continued his lessons and persuaded his father to allow himto study in Prague. In 1857 he entered the Prague Organ School, where he was able toremain for two years.Dvorak at first earned his living inPrague playing the viola in a band led by Karel Komsak, which was later to form part ofthe Provisional Theatre orchestra, established in 1862. He was to become principalviola-player and to continue as an orchestral player for the next nine years, for sometime under the direction of Smetana, who exercised considerable influence on Dvorak'sparallel work as a composer. In 1871 he found himself able to resign from the ProvisionalTheatre orchestra and to marry. At this time he took a position as organist at the churchof St. Adalbert, taught a few pupils and otherwise devoted himself to composition. It wasthrough the encouragement of Brahms, four years later, that his music was broughtgradually to the attention of a much wider public. In particular Brahms was able topersuade Simrock to publish Dvorak's Moravian Duets.Their success was followed by the publisher's request for a further set, the first seriesof Slavonic Dances, Opus 46, also composedfor piano duet, but orchestrated at the same time by the composer. The same year, 1878,saw the composition of the three Slavonic Rhapsodies,Opus 45.From this time onwards Dvorak's fame was to grow and he was towin particular popularity in Germany and in England, visiting the latter country onseveral occasions and fulfilling commissions for choral works for Birmingham and Leeds. In1891 he was appointed professor of composition at Prague Conservatory and the followingyear accepted an invitation to go to New York as director of the new NationalConservatory. The period in America gave rise to one of his best known works, the Symphony"From the New World". By 1895 he was back again in Prague, teaching at theConserv