Dvorak's Den

[Octave]

If you are looking for something a bit different:

[asin]B000001452[/asin]
This is so good (and is two pianos). Legends is also in orchestral form (fantastic - I have Mackerras, great, but that is OOP I believe). This Naxos disc brings out all the stops for me and is extremely well played. This is Sunday morning listening for me (of the best kind).

If you like chamber, the piano quintets and piano trios are wonderful as well.

This looks very interesting, but as a point of comparison, does anyone know this other recording of the two-piano LEGENDS:



Dvorak: LEGENDS [played by Leo van Doeselaar & Wyneke Jordans - released by Etcetera]
alternate ASIN: B000027KXP

[mc ukrneal]

I haven't heard any of the competition on this piece (if we talk piano only). There are surprisingly few versions considering the quality of the music. I know of:
[asin]B00005T6H5[/asin]


[asin]B004RCM8TI[/asin]

There is at least one other floating around with just one person who recorded both parts.

[Slowhand]

Newcomer to these forums, and to classical music in general.  But the two main composers that kindled my growing interest in the music were Dvorak and Mozart.  As I've seen others comment, I just found their music very accessible and responded to it immediately.  My main interest has actually been in symphonies since I started on this "journey" to familiarize myself with various composers.  Dvorak's were the first to completely bowl me over - everything from 7-9 amazed me, and still does.  In the last week or so I've been going through his symphonies in their entirety, listening to some different conductor's takes on them.

I know it's not about ranking music, but I'm an inveterate list-maker, so I thought I would go ahead and throw how I would rank Dvorak's symphonies, based upon nothing other than personal taste - not claiming they are the "best" or "greatest" in any order.

8
9
7
1 (found I seemed to liked this one a lot more than other folks)
6
5
4
2
3

[North Star]

Newcomer to these forums, and to classical music in general.  But the two main composers that kindled my growing interest in the music were Dvorak and Mozart.  As I've seen others comment, I just found their music very accessible and responded to it immediately.  My main interest has actually been in symphonies since I started on this "journey" to familiarize myself with various composers.  Dvorak's were the first to completely bowl me over - everything from 7-9 amazed me, and still does.  In the last week or so I've been going through his symphonies in their entirety, listening to some different conductor's takes on them.

I know it's not about ranking music, but I'm an inveterate list-maker, so I thought I would go ahead and throw how I would rank Dvorak's symphonies, based upon nothing other than personal taste - not claiming they are the "best" or "greatest" in any order.

Welcome to the forum, Slowhand! (Clapton fan?)

I'd suggest not focusing just on the symphonies - e.g. Dvorak wrote lots of wonderful chamber music (piano quintets, piano quartets, piano trios, string quintets, string quartets...), concertos (the Cello Concerto!), and loads of other stuff. And don't miss the Symphonic Poems! They are some of the very best of orchestral Dvorak.

[Mirror Image]

Looks like you got them all, Jens.

[jlaurson]

t'is up now:


A Survey of Dvorák Symphony Cycles


OK... inspired myself, of sorts, and put together a "Dvorak Survey", much like the

Bruckner Survey http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-survey-of-bruckner-cycles.html and the
Sibelius Survey http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2009/05/survey-of-sibelius-cycles.html. (Will go live tomorrow (9AM, EST) here: http://ionarts.blogspot.com/search/label/Discography) With about 15 3/4 + 1/2 cycles that I found (one of them mix&match), it's only half the size than either Bruckner or Sibelius... not surprising, really... given the popularity-discrepancy between 7-9 and cumbersome (though in their own way very appealing) 1-4. And thanks to awesome Qobuz, I can listen in on several sets I don't have. (Qobuz is a bit like Spotify and iTunes combined (streaming and downloading), but for specifically classical music audiophiles and, for the the time being, only in French. (Not that that keeps me.) Between that, the NML, and Spotify, I can sample pretty much anything that's out there, now.

http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-survey-of-dvorak-symphony-cycles.html

[Madiel]

I'm still working through the quartets, sporadically, with the Prague Quartet set.

So far I've listened to 1-3, 5-6, 8-9 and 12-13.  I'm listening to No.7 as I type.

I'm curious to know, for those who are reasonably familiar with the quartets, at what number do you reach what you regard as 'mature' quartets worth returning to reasonably often?

I've seen different comments placing it at a different number. For example, the Prague box decides that no.8 is the first 'completely mature' one.  I can't remember exactly what other numbers I've read elsewhere.

Given the large span of time over which I've been listening I can't really recall the quartets in detail, but numbers 1-3 were all a bit on the tedious side, with a lot of nice tunes but not nearly enough structural or textural control to keep it interesting.  This appears to be a common reaction. Whereas by the 1890s quartets (numbers 12-14) everything is much sharper and we've reached works that are pretty well universally acknowledged as being of high quality.

So I would expect for most people the dividing line is somewhere in the middle range, somewhere within quartets 5 to 11?

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Has anyone listened to Dvorak's symphonic poems? They are seriously underrated and they contain much wonderful music. My favorite is probably the Golden spinning wheel.

[North Star]

Has anyone listened to Dvorak's symphonic poems? They are seriously underrated and they contain much wonderful music. My favorite is probably the Golden spinning wheel.

Yes! That one, and The Water Goblin, The Noon Witch, and The Wild Dove, all brilliant, among the very best Dvorak.

[Brian]

So I would expect for most people the dividing line is somewhere in the middle range, somewhere within quartets 5 to 11?

I'd like to know the answer to this one as well. For me a "dividing line" runs down the middle of No. 4, which features two massive and rather clunky outer movements surrounding an utter gem of a slow movement, which was then re-used as the Nocturne in B for string quartet or string orchestra. It's one of the first glimmers of the Dvorak to come, in any of his music; it comes from 1870 and the only really strongly "Dvorak" moments predating it, to my knowledge, are the Cypresses and the back half of the Second Symphony.

1875 is the year I accept as the year when Dvorak really burst into full bloom: it produced his second string quintet (Op. 77), serenade for strings, first piano trio, and fifth symphony. At that point he'd finished seven string quartets.

As an aside, this inspired me to look at the Wikipedia list of Dvorak's complete works. Here are a few works listed as "lost":
- clarinet quintet, very early work (1865-69)
- Romeo and Juliet overture, composed concurrently with the Third Symphony (1873)
- Octet for clarinet, bassoon, horn, violins, viola, double bass, and piano (1873)

[Mandryka]

I'm still working through the quartets, sporadically, with the Prague Quartet set.

So far I've listened to 1-3, 5-6, 8-9 and 12-13.  I'm listening to No.7 as I type.

I'm curious to know, for those who are reasonably familiar with the quartets, at what number do you reach what you regard as 'mature' quartets worth returning to reasonably often?

I've seen different comments placing it at a different number. For example, the Prague box decides that no.8 is the first 'completely mature' one.  I can't remember exactly what other numbers I've read elsewhere.

Given the large span of time over which I've been listening I can't really recall the quartets in detail, but numbers 1-3 were all a bit on the tedious side, with a lot of nice tunes but not nearly enough structural or textural control to keep it interesting.  This appears to be a common reaction. Whereas by the 1890s quartets (numbers 12-14) everything is much sharper and we've reached works that are pretty well universally acknowledged as being of high quality.

So I would expect for most people the dividing line is somewhere in the middle range, somewhere within quartets 5 to 11?

I don't know about mature, but I think the interesting quartets are 9, 10, and above all 12 through 14.

[Elgarian]

Thanks be to Navneeth, who alerted us to the availability of this 15CD box at a bargain price by an Amazon uk marketplace seller (still available at under £20):



I thought heck, why not? I've never listened to any Czech chamber music, so I bought one. It arrived a few days ago, and yesterday evening I picked out Dvorak's 8th quartet at random. I was amazed; ended up abandoning the book I was reading and just listening - always a good sign. The slow movement had me particularly moved and enthralled.

I gather this isn't one of his best; well, all I can say is, I've had my twenty poundsworth already, with another fourteen and a half CDs to go. Many thanks, Nav.

[Opus106]

I've never listened to any Czech chamber music, so I bought one.

Although now that you've bought the box and started listening, I think we can still be friends.

[Elgarian]

Although now that you've bought the box and started listening, I think we can still be friends.

Knowing that things were hanging on a delicate wire, I confess to buying the box mainly in the hope of retrieving a desperate situation. Phew.

[Karl Henning]

You're a risk-taker, and non mistake.

[Elgarian]

You're a risk-taker, and non mistake.

I know. To seal the deal, I'm thinking of trying the 'New World' symphony soon.

(Well, in a week or two, after I've recovered my equilibrium.)

[Brahmsian]

Whoops! Didn't see this for a long while.

I always thought the Seventh Symphony had an apocalyptic, nightmarish ending, and then I started reading CD notes and GMG comments about there being a happy, even triumphant final coda to the symphony. I don't hear that at all. The final movement works itself into such an elaborate, desperate hysteria (favorite moments: the quiet passage in the development with snarling trombones, the explosive recap with its hyperactivity) that I don't know how it could come back from the edge of the cliff it's put itself on. The final coda, with its mad rush to those repeated chords, sounds to me not like victory but like submission - ultimate defeat, one last cry of pain before hurling itself over the edge. It's so headlong, so abrupt, so logical an ending but also so severed from what came before (unless you hear in it, as I do, an echo of the French horn tune that is played once and once only, at about 75 seconds into the first movement!).

raduneo, the connection with Janacek is definitely most clear in the symphonic poems. If you haven't heard them, try this glorious CD:

[asin]B0032Z1IG0[/asin]

They explore a new musical language Dvorak was working out at the end of his life, and if he didn't quite fulfill its potential, he did lead the way for Janacek, somewhat, with each work's insistence on 1-2 motifs developed and restated in huge numbers of different ways over spans of 15-25 minutes. The orchestration is also wilder and more primitive, with lots of bass clarinet and suspended cymbals. The Wild Dove's first performance was conducted by Janacek; then it was performed in Vienna by Mahler.

My review of the CD mentioned above: "The opening seconds of Golden Spinning Wheel, with the motoric cellos coupled to gentle cymbal crashes, are almost impossible to resist. This is the longest symphonic poem and the only one with a happy ending; Mackerras turns in the best performance I've ever heard. Here are sharp, precise rhythms, resplendent strings in the love music and an operatic pace which generates increasing excitement and drama as the piece proceeds..." etc.

Hmm.....storing in the wish list.  I've heard them, but don't have a copy yet of Dvorak's 4 symphonic poems, except for The Wild/Wood Dove.  This Mackerras looks dandy! 

[kyjo]

Hmm.....storing in the wish list.  I've heard them, but don't have a copy yet of Dvorak's 4 symphonic poems, except for The Wild/Wood Dove.  This Mackerras looks dandy! 

They're the definitive recordings of the symphonic poems. Mackerras was such a natural in Czech music. Jarvi/RSNO runs Mackerras a close second in these works, though.

[mc ukrneal]

They're the definitive recordings of the symphonic poems. Mackerras was such a natural in Czech music. Jarvi/RSNO runs Mackerras a close second in these works, though.

Probably not. Maybe one of the definitiveo ones, but Kubelik is often used as the reference.

[Sergeant Rock]

They're the definitive recordings of the symphonic poems. Mackerras was such a natural in Czech music. Jarvi/RSNO runs Mackerras a close second in these works, though.

Probably not. Maybe one of the definitiveo ones, but Kubelik is often used as the reference.

Kubelik, Järvi, Mack, great indeed--but definitive Dvorak? I prefer Harnoncourt's recordings of the tone poems. He defines definitive for me 

Sarge