Dvorak: Symphonies Nos 8 & 9

DvoRákˇ Symphony No. 8 Symphony No. 9 From the New World Antonín Dvorákv (1841-1904) Symphony No.8 in G major Op.88 1. Allegro con brio [10.02] 2. Adagio [10.20] 3. Allegretto grazioso - Molto vivace [6.06] 4. Allegro, ma non troppo [10.16] Symphony No.9 in E minor Op.95, ‘From the New World’ 1. Adagio - Allegro molto [9.24] 2. Largo [11.18] 3. Scherzo (Molto vivace) [8.06] 4. Allegro con fuoco [11.16] Total Timings [76.57] Sapporo Symphony Orchestra Tadaaki Otaka conductor www.signumrecords.com Old World, New World Jeanette Meyer Thurber is not a name well known whose influence American musical life might not to us today, but from the early 1880s until the end be what it is today. Her National Conservatory of her days some 70 years later, she was the achieved the highest status as a training ground powerhouse for the promotion of music in the for preparing the next generation of professional United States. She formed the earliest American musicians in America and was described as late repertory opera company that travelled the length as 1955 as retaining ‘a truly brilliant faculty and breadth of the United States, bringing …comprehensive curricula and proved itself a high-quality performances before the general vital force in this country’s musical development. public. She drummed up funding for and To this day no institute of musical instruction can presented a plethora of concerts, operas and be said to have surpassed its potentialities.’ In tours, underwrote concerts for children and 1891 it became the only U.S. arts organisation provided scholarships for the talented needy, but ever to be awarded the enormous prestige of a her crowning achievement was the founding of the congressional charter. National Conservatory of Music in America, an v institution which was open to all applicants - It was into this rarefied arena that Dvorák was Afro-Americans and women as well as white male invited, in the Summer of 1891, to become the students. Married to an industrialist whose wealth second Director of the National Conservatory by sprang from wholesale foods merchandising, this Mrs Meyer Thurber herself. The salary of some striking, aristocratic, bohemian woman enlisted $15,000 a year must have been quite an incentive the support of the most powerful patrons in the for the 50 year-old father of six as it was about 25 land in order to further her noble musical causes - times that of his annual pay at the Prague even the likes of Andrew Carnegie and the Conservatory. But, being little inclined to travel so Vanderbilt family were bent to her will. Through far from his homeland and family, Dvorákv refused, the National Conservatory she trained a crucial to little avail - Meyer Thurber’s tenacity knew no generation of composers and performers without bounds and within a few months she got her new 3 Director on a two year contract. She was keenly wrote about native American music, ‘The fact that aware of his reputation as a composer with a no one has yet arisen to make the most of it does nationalist bent and was determined that such an not prove that nothing is there’. Harry Burleigh, a esteemed practitioner would be able to identify the student at the National Conservatory, was invited building blocks of American music and construct to sing negro spirituals and the plantation songs them into a music that might befit a self- of Stephen Foster - music which evidently consciously emergent power. fascinated Dvorák.v He also studied transcriptions of music from Native American sources and even Dvorákv arrived in America, into New York Harbour, visited Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show for on 27 September 1892 and, after shaking off the inspiration. Rather than quote melodies verbatim, throng of flashbulbs and press reporters, he soon Dvorákv was intent on showing American settled down to a splendid working relationship composers, ‘what path they might take - how they with Mrs Meyer Thurber. As requested, Dvorákv only should work’. In an interview published in the New taught the most gifted of composition students, York Herald on 15 December 1893 - the day before while his presence also attracted national the symphony’s premiere, Dvorákv had this to say: attention, a generously funded prize for ‘American’ composition and a golden period for all associated Since I have been in this country I have been with the institution. Dvorákv did not shirk his own deeply interested in the national music of the part in establishing a new American music. Negroes and the Indians. The Character, the very During his two-year tenure he completed a nature of a race is contained in its national music. patriotic cantata, The American Flag Op.102, The For that reason my attention was turned at once in American String Quartet Op.96, a String Quintet in the direction of…native melodies. It is this spirit E flat, the Cello Concerto and, of course, his which I have tried to reproduce in my new Symphony in E minor Op.95, From the New World. Symphony. I have not actually used any of the melodies. I have simply written original themes v That Dvorák chose a symphony as the main embodying the peculiarities of the music, and, vehicle to fulfil America’s expectations attests to using these themes as subjects, have developed the high-minded seriousness with which he them all with the resources of modern rhythms, approached the task. As the composer himself harmony, counterpoint and orchestral color…It is 4 written upon the classical models and is in four and the work has enjoyed and occasionally movements. It opens with a short introduction, an endured sustained popularity throughout most Adagio…This leads directly into the Allegro, popular forms of entertainment. The song ‘Goin’ which embodies the principles which I have Home’ may sound like an old negro spiritual, but already worked out in my Slavonic Dances; that is, was, in fact, adapted from the symphony’s slow to preserve, translate into music, the spirit of a movement by composer Harry Burleigh, the same race as distinct in its national melodies or folk student who had sung spirituals to Dvorák.v In the songs. The second movement is a Largo. But it is UK it is known by a vast swathe of the population different from the classic works in the form. It is, through a nostalgic advert for bread. While the in reality, a sketch for a longer work, either a Largo may be the most purloined movement, Serge cantata or an opera which I propose writing, and Gainsbourg borrowed a theme from the first which will be based on Longfellow’s ‘Hiawatha’. movement for his song, ‘Initials BB’ and numerous The Scherzo of the Symphony was suggested by jazz and film soundtracks have made liberal use the wedding feast in ‘Hiawatha’ where Indians of sections of the score. In the realms of literature, dance, and is also an essay which I made in the Josef Skvorecky’s wonderful Scherzo Capriccioso direction of imparting the local color of Indian (Dvorákv in Love) is a charming, magical recreation character to the music. The last movement is an of late-nineteenth-century America, based on Allegro con fuoco. All the previous themes Dvorák’sv visit. reappear and are treated in a variety of ways. Less than two years before this massive upheaval Although much has been written as to how much in the composer’s life, he was happily hard at work ‘America’ there actually is in this symphony, it is on one of his shortest and perhaps most clear that Dvorák’sv intentions were entirely controversial symphony, No.8 in G major Op.88 honourable and that his brief stay in the United (published in London as Symphony No.4). States did provide the stimulation required to Dedicated to another institution to which he had produce a truly great symphony wrought on been admitted, “...the Emperor Franz Josef’s Czech American soil. The rapturous reception at its Academy of Science, Literature and the Arts”, Carnegie Hall premiere has been repeated Dvorák’sv fame was already such that he thousands of times across the globe ever since conducted performances in Prague, London, 5 Frankfurt and Cambridge. It was criticised by the effects that, after the Ninth Symphony, became powerful Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick as his home ground as a composer - the tone poem. fragmentary and by Brahms as lacking in Although not provided with a descriptive title, the substance. And while the work does not conform to sheer diversity and vibrancy of the musical the symphonic norms of the time, it rather takes argument makes for a wonderful, diverting its cue from Schumann in experimenting with entertainment, this time in an entirely Slavic, Old sonata form and is successful in creating a whole World, vein. from a rhapsodic treatment of linked melodic v motifs. This is a symphony marking Dvorák’s first © M. Ross proper venture into the profusion of ideas and Sapporo Concert Hall “Kitara” © Masahide Sato 6 BIOGRAPHies Sapporo Symphony polishing Sakkyo’s performances was the Austrian Orchestra conductor Peter Schwarz (1925-1998). Schwarz made the orchestra’s first recording of Tadaaki Otaka, Music Director Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) among other Ken Takaseki, Permanent Conductor works, and the first overseas concerts in the U.S. and Germany that he led during his tenure were The Sapporo Symphony Orchestra was originally also highly commended. Hiroyuki Iwaki (1932- founded on July 1, 1961, as the Sapporo Citizen 2006) served as Permanent Conductor from 1975, Symphony Orchestra and was incorporated and Music Director and Permanent Conductor from renamed the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra in the 1978 and Conductor Laureate from 1988 until he following year.

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