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

Description

Antonin Dvorak (1841 - 1904)Symphony No.2 in B Flat Major Legends Op. 59, Nos. 6 - 10Antonrn Dvorak was bornin 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 theexample of his father and grandfather by learning the family trade, and to this end heleft school at the age of eleven. There is no reliable record of his competence inbutchery, but his musical abilities were early apparent, and in 1853 he was sent to lodgewith an uncle in Zlonice, where he continued an apprenticeship started at home, learningGerman and improving his knowledge of music, rudimentary skill in which he had alreadyacquired at home and in the village band and church. Further study of German and of musicat Kamenice, a town in northern Bohemia, led to his admission, in 1857, to the PragueOrgan School, from which he graduated two years later.In the years thatfollowed, Dvorak earned his living as a viola-player in a band under the direction ofKarel 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 alreadybeen performed. It was not until 1871 that Dvorak resigned from the theatre orchestra, todevote more time to composition, as his music began to draw some favourable localattention. Two years later he married and early in 1874 became orginist of the church ofSt. 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 Ministryof Education stipendium by a committee in Vienna that included the critic Eduard Hanslickand Brahms. The following year Dvorak failed to win the award, but was successful in1877. His fourth application brought the personal interest of Hanslick and Brahms and aconnection with Simrock, the latter's publisher, who expressed a wish to publish theMoravian Duets and commissioned a set of SlavonicDances for piano duet. These compositions won particular popularity. There werevisits to Germany and to England, where he was always received with greater enthusiasmthan a Czech composer would ever at that time have won in Vienna. The series ofcompositions that followed secured him an unassailable position in Czech music and a placeof honour in the larger world.Early in 1891 Dvorak became professor of composition at PragueConservatory. In the summer of the same year he was invited to become director of theNational Conservatory of Music in New York, a venture which, it was hoped, would lay thefoundations for American national music. The very Bohemian musical results of Dvorak'stime in America are well known. Here he wrote his Ninth Symphony, From the New World, itsthemes influenced, at least, by what he had