SignumClassics PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA SignumClassics PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA 2 CDs S i g n u m C l a s s i c s THE PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA SIGCD132 SIGCD13 3 BRAHMS BRAHMS SIR CHARLES MACKERRAS SIR CHARLES MACKERRAS SCHUBERT SHOSTAKOVICH SCHUBERT SYMPHONY No.9 CHRISTOPH VON DOHNÁNYI SYMPHONY No.9 S i g n u m C l a s s i c s THE PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA SIGCD135 BRAHMS VLADIMIRB RAHMSASHKENAZY CHRISTOPH VON DOHNÁNYI SHOSTAKOVICH BRAHMS VLADIMIR ASHKENAZY SCHUBERT FESTIVE OVERTURE SCHUBERT SHOSTAKOVICH SYMPHONY No.2 & SYMPHONY No.4 SYMPHONY No.5 FESTIVE OVERTURE SYMPHONY No.5 BRAHMS SYMPHONY No.2 & SYMPHONY No.4 www.signumrecords.com www.philharmonia.co.uk Available through record stores and at www.signumrecords.com For more information call +44 (0) 20 8997 4000 SignumClassics PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA SIGCD133 SIGCD132 CHRISTOPH VON DOHNÁNYI BRAHMS SIR CHARLES MACKERRASSYMPHONY No.2 & SYMPHONY No.4 SIR CHARLES MACKERRAS SIGCD135 SCHUVLADIMIRB ASHKENAZYERT SIR CHARLES MACKERRAS SHOSTAKOVICH SYMPHONY No.9FESTIVE OVERTURE SYMPHONY No.5 SCHUBERT ˇ ´ SYMPHONY No.9 www.signumrecords.com www.philharmonia.co.uk Available through record stores and at www.signumrecords.com For more information call +44 (0) 20 8997 4000 DVORAK SYMPHONY No.7 & SYMPHONY No.8 www.signumrecords.com www.philharmonia.co.uk Available through record stores and at www.signumrecords.com For more information call +44 (0) 20 8997 4000 ˇ ´ ˇ ´ SYMPHONY No.7 DVORAK DVORAK SYMPHONY No.8 SYMPHONY No.7 & SYMPHONY No.8 As regards the new compositions, I should like I only wish you could see for yourself this city, … to recommend the big dramatic overture ‘The its bustle and life it would simply take your Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) Hussite’ and the Scherzo capriccioso, both for breath away. All attempts at description are vain; large orchestra. I presented both works last year anyone who has not seen and heard it would Symphony No. 7 at St. James's Hall and the Crystal Palace in not believe it. Imagine this huge area a mass of London and now I am writing for the Philharmonic 1 Allegro maestoso 10.25 houses and streets with a network of railways Society in London a new symphony which I must 2 and you have some small idea what London is Poco adagio 9.42 conduct myself on April 22nd of this year. like. Or : imagine the New Town Theatre about 3 Scherzo: Vivace 7.31 five times as big and you will know what the 4 Finale: Allegro 9.18 Dvořák’s letter to the great conductor, Hans Albert Hall is like where 10,000 people listened Richter was written in March 1885 as he was to [Dvořák’s] Stabat Mater and 1050 musicians Symphony No. 8 putting the finishing touches to perhaps his and singers played and sang - and then the 5 Allegro con brio 10.00 finest, if not his most famous, symphony – No.7 enormous organ. Imagine then the most 6 Adagio 10.28 in D minor, Op. 70. The first of Dvořák’s nine wonderful co-ordination of the whole ensemble 7 Allegretto grazioso 6.08 visits to England had taken place exactly one and you will be able to imagine the impression… 8 Allegro ma non troppo 10.15 year previously and he had been tremendously excited by the reception of his Sixth Symphony, This mutual love affair was consummated Total timings 73.52 among other works. Already known in Britain, when, after returning home in June 1884, he thorough his Slavonic Dances and Slavonic was elected as an honorary member of the Rhapsodies which had been performed there in Philharmonic Society and commissioned by it to 1879 and 1880, he was thrilled by his treatment write a symphony. Dvořák was in no small way PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA as the lion of the 1884 season, beguiled by impressed by this honour (commissions from details such as the press apparently casting the the society had resulted in Beethoven’s Ninth SIR CHARLES MACKERRAS CONDUCTOR ‘ř’ and ‘á’ to correctly print his name, and he Symphony and Mendelssohn’s Fourth earlier in www.signumrecords.com was completely bowled-over by London itself: the century) and in December that year he set 2 3 to work on his Seventh Symphony. By the end of February, 1885. A month later, the symphony plot of land from his brother-in-law and build a impenetrable, he remembered the ensuing glory the month he could write to a friend, ‘wherever I was complete and a further month on he country home in which to escape publishers, as ‘quite frightening’. Dvořák’s extended stay in go I think of nothing but my [symphony], which was conducting the first performance of the performers and city life in general. The full score the United States a couple of years later brought must be capable of stirring the world, and may work on 22 April at St James’s Hall, London. of the symphony, completed on 8 November, an even greater triumph to the work when it was God grant that it will!’ At the beginning of 1884, Writing to his friend Antonin Rus of the bears the inscription, ‘For being admitted to performed at the World’s Columbian Exposition Dvořák had travelled especially to Berlin to occasion, Dvořák enthused, ‘This time, too, the membership of the Emperor Franz Josef’s Czech in Chicago, on ‘Czech Day’ by an augmented hear an early performance of Brahms’s Third English again welcomed me as heartily and Academy of Science, Literature and the Arts’ - orchestra of 114 to an audience of around 8,000. Symphony and it had made a deep impression as demonstratively as always heretofore. The an honour bestowed upon him in April 1890. on him. Brahms had also cajoled the younger Symphony was immensely successful and at the Recent years had seen his fame rise and his Back in Central Europe, the symphony was composer somewhat about writing a better next performance will be a still greater success’. fortune accrue and he was now as famous as criticized by the powerful Viennese critic symphony than his previous effort and Dvořák Despite having being written in a matter of any composer still alive and at work. So it came Eduard Hanslick as fragmentary and even by was keen to prove himself. This was not quite three months, the symphony displays a formal as quite a shock when Simrock offered him a Brahms as somewhat lacking in substance. the normal rivalry between composers, since mastery which is matched only by an emotional mere 1,000 Marks for publication. Dvořák had And while the work does not conform to the Brahms had been instrumental in lending intensity, infusing what might be called the previously regarded the 3,000 Marks initially symphonic norms of the time, it rather takes Dvořák not only encouragement and support, ‘international’ idiom of the day with tightly offered by Simrock for his Seventh Symphony its cue from Schumann in experimenting with but also, after hearing his 10 Moravian Duets controlled and developed Slavonic musical as derisory (particularly after it’s great London sonata form and is successful in creating a in 1877, personally recommended Dvořák to elements and colourings which are tinged more success) and this new offer forced his hand and whole from a rhapsodic treatment of linked his own publisher, Simrock. Their relationship with storm and melancholy than with joy. he instead granted the first publishing rights melodic motifs, most notably in the opening was one of mutual respect, though it is clear to the London house of Novello. A couple of movement. As a whole, the atmosphere that Dvořák was in awe of Brahms, even Just as Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony has months after the symphony’s premiere in Prague speaks of Dvořák’s Bohemian countryside: submitting the proofs of many a work to been sometimes dubbed the ‘Tragic’, so his on 2 January 1890, he was again making his bird calls, pastoral calm, happily plodding the German. Having already scored a great Eighth might well bear the monikers ‘Poetic’ way to England to conduct the work for the bass lines, elegant waltzes, stamping country critical and financial success with Brahms’s or ‘Pastoral’ such is its easeful nature in Philharmonic Society. He would reprise the work dances, fanfares, hints of chorales or funeral own Hungarian Dances, Simrock was keen to comparison to its predecessor. It was composed at Cambridge University the following year, on marches and radiant or rip-roaring joy. This repeat the experience, and did so by publishing even quicker than the Seventh, in about 10 15 June, together with his Stabat Mater, as is a symphony marking Dvořáks first venture Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances and achieving weeks from the end of August 1899, at his proof of his academic suitability to be conferred proper into the profusion of ideas and effects an extraordinary over-night sensation. brother-in-law Count Dr Václav Kounic’s estate an honorary Doctor of Music the following that, after the Ninth Symphony, transported at Vysoká u Příbram, in Central Bohemia. day. Despite finding the amount of music him to the new world of the symphonic poem. Dvořák was keen not to let Brahms down, and Dvořák’s successes in England and elsewhere enough to give him indigestion and the Latin, admitted as much to Simrock in a letter of had afforded him the means to purchase a which dominated the academic proceedings, © M Ross 4 5 the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Biographies Britten’s Gloriana [awarded Gramophone Sir Charles made his debut with the Royal magazine’s Best Opera Recording for Opera House, Covent Garden in 1964, where Sir Charles Mackerras 1994] and Dvořák’s Rusalka with the he has since conducted 33 operas, including Czech Philharmonic Orchestra awarded Un Ballo in Maschera which celebrated his Born in 1925 of Australian parents in life-long association with both the Orchestra Gramophone magazine’s 'Best Opera 50th anniversary and 80th birthday in 2005.