Given his current stature as one of the foremost composers of the nineteenth century, Antonín Dvořák was something of a late bloomer, but not for want of musical talent and promise. Dvořák’s father was a butcher and had expected his son to go into the family trade. Only after his uncle had agreed to finance the boy’s musical education was he able to follow his passion for music. Although trained as a church organist, Dvořák’s first job was as a performer, playing principal viola in Prague’s new Provincial Theatre Orchestra. During this time, he practiced composition, producing songs, symphonies and entire operas but without recognition – much less appreciation – until he was in his 30s.

After winning several national prizes during the 1870s, however, his work came to the attention of Johannes Brahms, who gave him his first real break. The older composer, whose reputation was at its height, promoted Dvořák to his own publisher, Simrock, who offered the young composer his first commission, the Opus 46 set of Slavonic Dances. Brahms and the music critic Eduard Hanslick urged him to move to Vienna, but his love for his native Bohemia kept him in Prague. Like his older compatriot Bedrich Smetana, Dvořák freely incorporated folk elements into his music, utilizing characteristic peasant rhythms and melodic motives but never actually quoting entire folk melodies.

Another prominent musician who took great interest in Dvořák’s music was Hans Richter, the famed conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic. Following the successful premiere of the Slavonic Rhapsody No. 3 (Op.45/3), Richter asked Dvořák to compose a symphony for Vienna. The result was the Symphony No. 6, composed in white heat between August and October 1880 and dedicated to Richter. Sadly, the musicians of the Vienna Philharmonic refused to perform a second work in two years by the “outsider” from the Bohemian provinces, leaving it to the Prague Philharmonic to do the honors in 1881 (70 years later – even after the collapse of Nazism – the chauvinistic Vienna Philharmonic musicians refused to perform the symphonies of Gustav Mahler, a Czech Jew, until Leonard Bernstein virtually forced it on them). Richter finally conducted it in London the following year. It was Dvořák’s first symphony to propel him to international fame. Since Dvořák’s five earlier symphonies had remained unpublished, the Sixth was originally published as Symphony No. 1.

The Symphony pays homage to Brahms’s Symphony No. s, especially in the sweep of the first movement; Dvořák spins out a stream of melodies accompanied by easily recognizable Brahmsian harmonic progressions. One of the hallmarks of this Symphony is that the composer develops short motivic fragments, rather than expansive themes.

The Symphony opens with an oboe duet echoed by the bassoons and cellos. A lilting cello theme serves as a bridge on the way to the principal secondary theme introduced by the solo oboe. For the development Dvořák extracts the essential motives from each of these themes, also producing some shadow in an otherwise sunny atmosphere

The Adagio is built essentially on a single theme. The three-note motive that opens the movement is a hint that the movement will concentrate on variations and transformations of this brief fragment. At only one point does a burst of anguish break the tranquil mood.

The Scherzo is a furiant, a Czech folk dance and could be easily mistaken for one of the Slavonic Dances. The Trio is distantly related to a fragment of the Scherzo melody, reducing it to an almost Rococo theme for the upper winds. Dvořák then adds a melancholy waltz for a second Trio,

The Finale again recalls Brahms’s Second Symphony. However, the second, and dominant, theme is a distinctly Bohemian dance. The interplay between the Germanic and Czech motives continues throughout the movement. For the coda Dvorak ramps up the tempo and a triumphant conclusion.

Program notes by:
Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn
Wordpros@mindspring.com
www.wordprosmusic.com