The first page of the contract (put on public display in 2013 after being recently rediscovered) proffered by Mrs. Jeannette Thurber and signed by Antonín Dvořák in 1892 which brought the composer to New York to serve as director of her new National Conservatory for Music [from a photo by Chang W. Lee for The New York Times]It was an audacious act of Gilded Age New York. Jeannette Thurber, a wealthy patron trying to create not just a new American music school but, more broadly, a new American school of music, decided in 1891 to hire one of the greatest composers of the day: Antonin Dvorak.
She offered him $15,000 a year — more than 25 times what he made at home in Prague — and promised him summers off. In exchange, she made him promise to work regular hours six days a week at her school, instruct “the most talented pupils only” and conduct concerts.
After months of trans-Atlantic negotiations, they eventually struck the deal that brought Dvorak to New York City in 1892 for an eventful three-year sojourn to lead Mrs. Thurber’s National Conservatory of Music of America — a period in which he composed some of his best work, including his American-inflected “New World” Symphony and Cello Concerto. . . .-- Michael Cooper, in The Times, Aug. 24, 2013
Vienna Philharmonic, Rafael Kubelik, cond. Decca, recorded in the Sofiensaal, October 1956
by Ken
Before I get to my answer, I should explain that while the title Dvořák in Love to most of us suggests some sort of romantic dalliance, in fact, as a Goodreads blurb puts it, "This splendid novel tells the story of Dvorak's utterly requited love affair with America."
Now, back to Francis's question. I acknowledged that I had taken the tour before, and explained that, first, even among Francis's tours, than which walking tours don't get any better, this one had left a powerful imprint in my imagination, and, second, given how much I forget of what I "learn" on a tour (my standard estimate is that I remember on a good day maybe 10 percent of what I've been told), not to mention how much probably never properly registered, I wanted a chance to "fix" more of the tour in my brain.
I might have added something I know from experience of other tours of Francis's that I've done more than once: that even when he repeats a tour, it isn't exactly the same tour. Not to mention that on the later occasion(s) I'm not exactly the same person I was.
I STILL MEAN TO TALK ABOUT THE "DVOŘÁK IN LOVE" TOUR,
BUT LET'S GET BACK TO THE BIT OF MUSIC WE JUST HEARD
For one thing, it was Francis who got me to thinking about Josf Suk and Kurt Masur as they relate to the subject of Dvořák, as you may have noticed in last week's post -- and maybe not just on that subject, which will also involve some more talk and, more happily, more music. I wasn't surprised, when I took a look in the Archive, to see how much from each of these special performers we've heard. This wasn't planned; it just happened that way.
And speaking of last week's post, I also want to make some remarks of a housekeeping nature about the audio clips, which I'm emboldened to want to talk about a bit -- just not right now.
Probably everyone knows the theme we heard at the top of the post.
It's what we might call "the 3rd theme" of the exposition of the main body of the opening movement of Dvořák's New World Symphony -- which is to say the Allegro molto, following the haunting Adagio introduction, so intense and potentially electrifying. Let me say that if anyone wants to call this little tune, or maybe just germ of a tune, the most beautiful musical theme ever devised, they won't get any argument from me.
Note how quickly, though, it's blown up into something way more dramatic -- while we're still, properly speaking, in the exposition section of the Allegro molto. What we actually hear in the clip is the end of the exposition running into the start of the development, which begins with the expectant run-up to the solo-horn restatement of our theme. Note that here it takes on a distinctly different profile still.
WE SHOULD PROBABLY HEAR THE WHOLE MOVEMENT, NO?
Since we've already sampled the "one last New World recording" Rafael Kubelik (1914-1996) made the year after his joyful and unexpected reunion with his beloved Czech Philharmonic -- after more than four decades of exile from his Czechoslovak homeland -- during the Prague Spring of 1990, for which he'd come out of retirement forced on him by ill health, and also the recording he made in 1972 with the Berlin Philharmonic as part of his complete cycle of the nine Dvořák symphonies for DG, I thought we'd sample two earlier recordings, from those exile years: his first stereo New World, from 1956 with the Vienna Philharmonic (the source of our excerpt at the top of the post) and the one he made in the New World, for Mercury, during his fraught but productive brief tenure (1950-53) as music director of the Chicago Symphony, still in the shadow of the 37-year tenure (1872-1942) of Frederick Stock (1905-1942), who himself had succeeded the orchestra's founding conductor (in 1891), Theodore Thomas (1835-1905). (Keep Thomas's name in mind! It will turn up again, not this week but in a future installment in Dvořák's New World story.)
DVOŘÁK: Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op 95
(From the New World): i. Adagio -- Allegro molto
[Allegro molto: 1st theme, 1:44; 2nd theme, 2:48; 3rd theme, 3:52]
Vienna Philharmonic, Rafael Kubelik, cond. Decca, recorded in the Sofiensaal, October 1956
[Allegro molto: 1st theme, 1:48; 2nd theme, 2:49; 3rd theme, 3:48]
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Rafael Kubelik, cond. Mercury, recorded in Orchestra Hall, November 19-20, 1951
While we're at it, we should probably hear
a performance that takes the exposition repeat
[Allegro molto: 1st theme, 2:06; 2nd theme, 3:08; 3rd theme, 4:06. Repeat: 1st theme, 4:39; 2nd theme, 5:43; 3rd theme, 6:42. Development: 7:32] Concertgebouw Orchestra, Colin Davis, cond. Philips, recorded in the Concertgebouw, November 1977
ABOUT THOSE AUDIO CLIPS IN LAST WEEK'S POST
If you've been reading these posts much, you're undoubtedly tired of hearing me whine about the hardship imposed by not being able to see and hear a post with the audio clips live and accessible until the thing is posted. As it happens, once last week's post was posted, for some reason I found myself playing with the clips quite a lot -- I'm thinking specifically of the Dvořák clips from Josef Suk (the finale of the Violin Concerto and the first two movements of the Dumky Piano Trio) and the three very different performances of Arthur Sullivan's Cox and Box Overture -- and enjoying them quite a lot.
I've probably said it, and more than once, or maybe I just meant to say several dozen times, but sometimes when I'm unusually stern despair over the pointlessness of these efforts, the music by itself kind of makes it seem, if not worthwhile, then at least OK. And with my main computer's audio fucntion now restored to functionality (as I think I've mentioned) feeding a super-special-priced used pair of Yamaha computer speakers, freeing my basement-rescue Bose speakers, which I still like a lot, for service with a notebook computer, both "systems" sound pretty swell to me -- sounding endearingly like music, a statement that probablly sounds odd without reference to the state of my hearing, a subject I've assumed for the longest time would by now have come up for discussion, and yet here we are. (This is, um, complicated, and I've learned a lot about hearing which I suspect many people don't know, a little of it from sketchy science, much more of it from experience. On the simplest level, though, it's not at all that this makes me stupidly easy to please soundwise. On the contrary, it mostly makes me grimly, sometimes stoically, more often painfully un-accepting.)
Hmm, I see I've drifted. I was in the process of bringing up the subject of last week's clips, for two reasons:
(1) To encourage anyone who hasn't listened to them to take a taste, and perhaps share thoughts.
(2) To note that I plan to come back to those clips in future posts. The Dvořák clips should nestle easily enough into the further consideration of Josef Suk, Kurt Masur, and Dvořák, while the Cox and Box Overture is an interestingly discussion-worthy case of three really good performances . . .
BURNAND and SULLIVAN: Cox and Box: Overture
New Symphony Orchestra of London, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded 1961
Pro Arte Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded 1961
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royston Nash, cond. Decca, recorded February 1978
. . . three performances that are really good but nevertheless quite different -- or is it three performances that are quite different and nevertheless all really good? I think there's room to expand the Isidore Godfrey vs. Malcolm Sargent vs. Roystan Nash conversation to a few works from the G&S canon. So be warned.
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