Serenade for Winds Symphony No. 9 From the New World. London Symphony Orchestra Wiener Philharmoniker. István Kertész

Transcription

1 Eloq uence DVOŘÁK Serenade for Winds Symphony No. 9 From the New World London Symphony Orchestra Wiener Philharmoniker István Kertész

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3 ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK ( ) Serenade for Winds in D minor, Op I Moderato, quasi marcia II Minuetto (Tempo di minuetto) III Andante con moto IV Finale (Allegro molto) 6 03 London Symphony Orchestra István Kertész Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 From the New World 5 I Adagio Allegro molto II Largo III Scherzo (molto vivace) IV Allegro con fuoco Wiener Philharmoniker István Kertész Total timing: 64 45

4 Antonín Dvořák was born in the Bohemian village of Nelahozeves in Finishing school at age eleven, Tonik, as he was called as a child, was apprenticed to his butcher father. Not long after, he was sent to another small town, Zlonice, to learn German, in the hope that this might improve his career prospects (Bohemia was then under Austrian rule). His teacher, Antonín Liehmann, was a musician, and recognised Dvořák s talent. German lessons were abandoned in favour of instruction in harmony, counterpoint, organ, viola, violin and piano. In 1857 Liehmann arranged for Dvořák to study at the Organ school in Prague. After graduating he earned a living mainly through teaching. He also spent much time playing viola in the Bohemian Provisional Theatre orchestra under Bohemia s premier composer, Bedřich Smetana. A competition for impoverished composers in 1874 encouraged Dvořák to enter some of his compositions. He won the cash prize, and also the attention of Brahms, one of the adjudicators. Brahms recommended Dvořák s Moravian Duets to his publisher Simrock, who brought out both the duets and a newly commissioned work in Dvořák was then 37; from that time on his reputation grew, with his works being played in Germany, England and America. Hans von Bülow s 1877 reference to Dvořák as next to Brahms, the most God-gifted composer of the present day was finally matched by international recognition. In 1891 Dvořák received a telegram from a Mrs. Jeannette M. Thurber, inviting him to direct her National Conservatory of Music in New York. He accepted only after negotiating some conditions, which included him teaching only the best students as well as a generous salary. On 26 September of the same year he arrived in the United States with his wife and two of his six children. Dvořák s duties at the Conservatory were light. He spent six hours a week teaching composition and attended the odd administration meeting. His most important task was to create interest in a new American style. The six concerts his contract required him to conduct failed to materialise, after his first and only concert was financially unsuccessful. Emanuel Rubin, author of the chapter on the composer s experiences at the National Conservatory in John C. Tibbetts s book Dvořák in America, , writes, The concert was a powerful demonstration of the school s philosophy which was to provide quality tuition to the most talented students, regardless of race, gender or financial status. (This philosophy gave the school an enviable reputation but poor monetary returns: one reason why Dvořák did

5 not renew his contract in 1895.) The New York Herald reported that Each soloist, with one exception, belonged to the coloured race ; another student s Plantation Dances were premiered. It is no wonder that Dvořák developed an interest in the music of black Americans during his time at the Conservatory. He befriended student Harry T. Burleigh, who sang him black spirituals. In his public statements Dvořák promoted African American, and later, Native American music as the basis of an American national style. Dvořák s best-known contribution to American music is the New World Symphony, premiered by the New York Philharmonic in Despite the work s immediate success, it proved controversial: is it really American, or Bohemian, with a patriotic nickname added to appease the expectant audience? Maybe one of the composer s little jokes, as his secretary suggested. Dvořák wrote that anyone with a nose could detect the work s American influences. But he was no ethnomusicologist: his understanding of Native and African American music was shaped by his fairly traditional education. Like Mendelssohn, he could offer only his impressions of his new surroundings. Speaking to the Herald, Dvořák commented the music of the two races (African and Native American) bore a remarkable similarity to the national music of Scotland. The distinctive Scotch snap rhythm, also common in eastern European music, and a pentatonic scale are present in the first movement, in a catchy theme introduced by the horns. The next theme is supported by a drone bass, another nationalistic colouring, and the third, written for the lowest register of the flute, recalls Swing low, sweet chariot (which the homesick Dvořák perhaps wished would carry him home). The Largo second movement was in reality a study or sketch for a longer work based on Longfellow s Hiawatha. Published in 1855 and first encountered by Dvořák as early as the 1870s, The Song of Hiawatha is long narrative poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Relating the life of Hiawatha, an American Indian, it is partly inspired by the Finnish Kalevala and American Indian legends. Commentator Jack Sullivan writes that the poem s frank primitivism was precisely what he [Dvořák] was striving for in New World art. He believes it appealed to Dvořák s background in its pastoral imagery and sympathy for America s native inhabitants. The portion of the poem depicted in this movement is The Wooing of Minnehaha, Hiawatha s love from an enemy tribe; its cor anglais theme is an equally poignant expression of loneliness.

6 The Scherzo, representing Hiawatha s Wedding Feast, comprises three sections: a dance, a love song, and the tale that the storyteller Iagoo relates in the following chapter of the poem. The story, in which the protagonists are turned into birds of various plumage (before one is shot down by an arrow and all become pygmies) must have been irresistible to Dvořak, who had a lifelong fascination with birds. The story is depicted in the trio, with its numerous twittering trills. Dvořák s Hiawatha symphony, as some suggest it be called, ends with a pot-pourri of the symphony s themes, ingeniously transformed and arranged. Perhaps tired of the controversy surrounding his Bohemian/American creation, Dvořák declared: I was, I am and I remain a Czech composer. I have only showed them the path they might take how they should work. But I m through with that! From this day forward I will write the way I wrote before! Jennifer Butler Dvořák intended to write three serenades for small orchestra, but in fact completed only two of them the Serenade in E major, Op. 22 for strings (1875), and the Serenade in D minor, Op. 44 for winds, with string bass (1878). The third work became the Czech Suite, Op. 39, of The D minor Serenade was composed at white heat between 4 and 18 January 1878 (the first movement was finished in one day), and was first performed at a concert of Dvořák s works given under his own direction by the orchestra of the Czech Interim Theatre in Prague on 17 November of the same year. The score was published in Berlin by Simrock in April 1879, with a dedication to the German music critic Louis Ehlert, probably as an expression of gratitude for his enthusiastic review in the Berliner Nationalzeitung of Dvořák s Moravian Duets, Op. 32, and of the first set of Slavonic Dances, Op. 46. Dvořák s work is a conscious re-creation of the spirit of the eighteenth-century wind serenade, the cello and bass providing, for most of the time, little more than a foundation for the wind band (which consists of two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, optional contrabassoon, and three horns). The first movement is in ternary form, and is in the style of a march a direct allusion to eighteenth-century practice. The opening and closing sections (whose theme, like all the principal themes throughout the work, begins with an ascending interval of a fourth) are deliberately heavy and rather pompous; the middle section (in F major) is derived from a lilting motif announced by the two clarinets. The Minuet (in F) is, as Dvorák ˇ

7 scholar Otakar Šourek has pointed out, in the style of a sousedská, a slow dance-form used by Dvořák on several occasions in his Slavonic Dances; much use is made of the sliding foursemiquaver figure played by the clarinets in the fifth bar. The Trio (in B flat) is marked Presto, and is in the style of a furiant: full of syncopations and dynamic contrasts, and with rhythmic impetus provided by a wavering motif in thirds derived from the semiquaver figure of the Minuet itself. movement, before an exuberant coda brings the work to a resounding finish in D major. Robin Golding In the rhapsodic Andante con moto in A, the perceptiveness and resource of Dvořák s scoring is perhaps seen at its most masterly. The movement has the character of a nocturne, and its main theme is a particularly beautiful cantilena intoned by clarinet and oboe in turn. The cheerful finale is a sort of rondo though distinctly unorthodox in design. It opens with a bold idea in octaves that is loosely related to the march theme of the first movement. A theme on the bass instruments quickly takes over from it, however, and when the refrain eventually returns it does so in a slightly altered, more rustic form: in sixths on the clarinets. Two further episodes are provided by an attractive interlude in the style of a gentle polka and by a reappearance of the march theme from the first

8 István Kertész PHOTO: DECCA/ELFRIEDE HANAK

9 István Kertész, born in 1929, trained as a conductor, composer and violinist in his native Budapest. He and his immediate family stood their ground during the German invasion of Hungary Kertész was Jewish and the Soviet takeover. Ultimately, however, he left his homeland in 1957, shortly after the Hungarian Revolution had been put down by Soviet forces. Appointments in Augsburg and Cologne were followed by his being named Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, where he succeeded Pierre Monteux. He served in that role between 1965 and He was only 43 when he drowned while swimming in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Israel. In addition to his highly acclaimed Mozart recordings, he also recorded the complete symphonies of Schubert (with the Wiener Philharmoniker) and Dvořák (with the LSO) for Decca. His first recording with the Wiener Philharmoniker was this account of Dvořák s New World symphony and the sessions, according to producer Ray Minshull, had a lot of nervous energy. It remains one of the most passionate and explosive recordings of the work..

10 ISTVÁN KERTÉSZ on DECCA ELOQUENCE BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 4 DVOŘAK: Overtures & Tone Poems MOZART: Requiem; Masonic Music (2CD) (4CD) (2CD) BRAHMS: Symphonies Nos. 1-4; Serenades Nos. 1 & 2; Haydn Variations KODÁLY: Choral works BARTÓK: Cantata profana MOZART: Symphonies Nos. 25, 29, 35 Haffner DVOŘAK: Symphony No. 9; Serenade for wind instruments KODÁLY: The Peacock; Peacock Variations; Hary Janos: suite; Dances of Galanta MOZART: Symphonies Nos. 33, 39, (2CD) (2CD) DVOŘAK: Requiem ROSSINI: Stabat Mater KODÁLY: Hary Janos BARTÓK: Duke Bluebeard's Castle MOZART: Symphony No. 36 Linz ; Eine kleine Nachtmusik; March in C; Overtures MOZART OPERA FESTIVAL RESPIGHI: Pines of Rome; Fountains of Rome; The Birds SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 5 BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY

11 Recording producers: Ray Minshull, (Symphony); Erik Smith (Serenade) Recording engineers: James Brown (Symphony); Kenneth Wilkinson (Serenade) Recording locations: Sofiensaal, Vienna, Austria, March 1961 (Symphony); Kingsway Hall, London, UK, May 1968 (Serenade) Eloquence series manager: Cyrus Meher-Homji Art direction: Chilu Booklet editor: Bruce Raggatt

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