110Booklet 27/8/07 16:41 Page 1 AVAILABLE on signumclassics SIGCD051 Hypothetically Murdered SIGCD052 Hamlet & King Lear Dmitri Shostakovich Dmitri Shostakovich City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Elder City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Elder SIGCD053 Red Leaves SIGCD096 In Time of Daffodils Works by 20th Century Composers John Metcalf Brunel Ensemble / Austin BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Llewellyn Available through most record stores and at www.signumrecords.com For more information call +44 (0) 20 8997 4000 110Booklet 27/8/07 16:41 Page 3 DvoRákˇ Old World, New World Symphony No. 8 Symphony No. 9 From the 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 Antonín Dvorákv (1841-1904) 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 Symphony No.8 in G major Op.88 United States. She formed the earliest American musicians in America and was described as late 1. Allegro con brio [10.02] 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 2. Adagio [10.20] high-quality performances before the general vital force in this country’s musical development. 3. Allegretto grazioso - Molto vivace [6.06] public. She drummed up funding for and To this day no institute of musical instruction can 4. Allegro, ma non troppo [10.16] 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 Symphony No.9 in E minor Op.95, ‘From the New World’ provided scholarships for the talented needy, but ever to be awarded the enormous prestige of a 1. Adagio - Allegro molto [9.24] her crowning achievement was the founding of the congressional charter. 2. Largo [11.18] National Conservatory of Music in America, an v 3. Scherzo (Molto vivace) [8.06] institution which was open to all applicants - It was into this rarefied arena that Dvorák was 4. Allegro con fuoco [11.16] 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 Total Timings [76.57] 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 Sapporo Symphony Orchestra even the likes of Andrew Carnegie and the Conservatory. But, being little inclined to travel so Tadaaki Otaka conductor 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 www.signumrecords.com generation of composers and performers without bounds and within a few months she got her new - 3 - 110Booklet 27/8/07 16:41 Page 5 Director on a two year contract. She was keenly wrote about native American music, ‘The fact that written upon the classical models and is in four and the work has enjoyed and occasionally aware of his reputation as a composer with a no one has yet arisen to make the most of it does movements. It opens with a short introduction, an endured sustained popularity throughout most nationalist bent and was determined that such an not prove that nothing is there’. Harry Burleigh, a Adagio…This leads directly into the Allegro, popular forms of entertainment. The song ‘Goin’ esteemed practitioner would be able to identify the student at the National Conservatory, was invited which embodies the principles which I have Home’ may sound like an old negro spiritual, but building blocks of American music and construct to sing negro spirituals and the plantation songs already worked out in my Slavonic Dances; that is, was, in fact, adapted from the symphony’s slow them into a music that might befit a self- of Stephen Foster - music which evidently to preserve, translate into music, the spirit of a movement by composer Harry Burleigh, the same consciously emergent power. fascinated Dvorák.v He also studied transcriptions race as distinct in its national melodies or folk student who had sung spirituals to Dvorák.v In the of music from Native American sources and even songs. The second movement is a Largo. But it is UK it is known by a vast swathe of the population Dvorákv arrived in America, into New York Harbour, visited Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show for different from the classic works in the form. It is, through a nostalgic advert for bread. While the on 27 September 1892 and, after shaking off the inspiration. Rather than quote melodies verbatim, in reality, a sketch for a longer work, either a Largo may be the most purloined movement, Serge throng of flashbulbs and press reporters, he soon Dvorákv was intent on showing American cantata or an opera which I propose writing, and Gainsbourg borrowed a theme from the first settled down to a splendid working relationship composers, ‘what path they might take - how they which will be based on Longfellow’s ‘Hiawatha’. movement for his song, ‘Initials BB’ and numerous with Mrs Meyer Thurber. As requested, Dvorákv only should work’. In an interview published in the New The Scherzo of the Symphony was suggested by jazz and film soundtracks have made liberal use taught the most gifted of composition students, York Herald on 15 December 1893 - the day before the wedding feast in ‘Hiawatha’ where Indians of sections of the score. In the realms of literature, while his presence also attracted national the symphony’s premiere, Dvorákv had this to say: dance, and is also an essay which I made in the Josef Skvorecky’s wonderful Scherzo Capriccioso attention, a generously funded prize for ‘American’ direction of imparting the local color of Indian (Dvorákv in Love) is a charming, magical recreation composition and a golden period for all associated Since I have been in this country I have been character to the music. The last movement is an of late-nineteenth-century America, based on with the institution. Dvorákv did not shirk his own deeply interested in the national music of the Allegro con fuoco. All the previous themes Dvorák’sv visit. part in establishing a new American music. Negroes and the Indians. The Character, the very reappear and are treated in a variety of ways. During his two-year tenure he completed a nature of a race is contained in its national music. Less than two years before this massive upheaval patriotic cantata, The American Flag Op.102, The For that reason my attention was turned at once in Although much has been written as to how much in the composer’s life, he was happily hard at work American String Quartet Op.96, a String Quintet in the direction of…native melodies. It is this spirit ‘America’ there actually is in this symphony, it is on one of his shortest and perhaps most E flat, the Cello Concerto and, of course, his which I have tried to reproduce in my new clear that Dvorák’sv intentions were entirely controversial symphony, No.8 in G major Op.88 Symphony in E minor Op.95, From the New World. Symphony. I have not actually used any of the honourable and that his brief stay in the United (published in London as Symphony No.4). melodies. I have simply written original themes States did provide the stimulation required to Dedicated to another institution to which he had That Dvorákv chose a symphony as the main embodying the peculiarities of the music, and, produce a truly great symphony wrought on been admitted, “...the Emperor Franz Josef’s Czech vehicle to fulfil America’s expectations attests to using these themes as subjects, have developed American soil. The rapturous reception at its Academy of Science, Literature and the Arts”, the high-minded seriousness with which he them all with the resources of modern rhythms, Carnegie Hall premiere has been repeated Dvorák’sv fame was already such that he approached the task. As the composer himself harmony, counterpoint and orchestral color…It is thousands of times across the globe ever since conducted performances in Prague, London, - 5 - - 6 - 110Booklet 27/8/07 16:41 Page 7 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. BIOGRAPHies 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 Sapporo Symphony polishing Sakkyo’s performances was the Austrian its cue from Schumann in experimenting with entertainment, this time in an entirely Slavic, Old Orchestra conductor Peter Schwarz (1925-1998). Schwarz sonata form and is successful in creating a whole World, vein. made the orchestra’s first recording of from a rhapsodic treatment of linked melodic Tadaaki Otaka, Music Director Beethoven’s Symphony No.