Dvorak: Symphonies Nos. 4 And 8

Description

Antonin DvorakSymphony No.4 in D Minor, Opus 13 Symphony No.8 in G Major, Opus 33Antonin Dvorak was born in 1841 , theson of a butcher and innkeeper in the village of Nelahozeves, near Kralupy, in Bohemia,some forty miles north of Prague. It was natural that he shou/d follow the example of hisfather and grandfather by learning the family trade, and to this end he left school at theage of eleven. There is no reliable record of his competence in butchery, but his musicalabilities 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 hisknowledge of music, rudimentary skill in which he had already acquired at home and in thevillage band and church. Further study of German and of music at Kamenice, a town innorthern Bohemia, led to his admission, in 1857, to the Prague Organ school, from which hegraduated two years later.In the years that followed, Dvorakearned his living as a viola-player in a band under the direction of Karel Komzak whichwas to form the nucleus of the Provisional Theatre Orchestra, established in 1862. Fouryears later Smetana was appointed conductor of the opera-house, where his Czech operas The Brandenburgers in Bohemia and The Bartered Bride were performed. It was not until1871 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 andearly in 1874 became organist of the church of St. Adalbert. During this period hecontinued to support himself by private teaching, while busy on a series of compositionsthat gradually become known to a wider circle.Further recognition came in 1875 withthe award of a Ministry of Education stipendium by a committee in Vienna that included thecritic Eduard Hanslick and Brahms. The following year Dvorak failed to win the award, butwas successful in 1877. His fourth application brought the personal interest of Hanslickand Brahms and a connection with Simrock, the latter's publisher, who expressed a wish topublish the Moravian Duets and commissioned a set of Slavonic Dances for piano duet. Thesecompositions won particular popularity. There were visits to Germany and to England, wherehe was always received with greater enthusiasm than a Czech composer would ever at thattime have won in Vienna. The series of compositions that followed secured him anunassailable position in Czech music and a place of honour in the larger world.Early in 1891 Dvorak became professorof composition at Prague Conservatory. In the summer of the same year he was invited tobecome director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York, a venture which, it washoped, would lay the foundations for American national music. The very Bohemian musicalresults 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 indig