DVORAK: SYMPHONY N.5

Performer: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Istvan Kertesz
Author: Dvorak
Number of discs: 1
Label: Speakers Corner
Support: LPs
Genre: Classical Orchestral
Year: 1997

This LP has been pressed using very high quality Decca recordings.

The Symphony No. 9 in E minor by Antonín Dvo??ák, op. 95, also known as the Symphony "From the New World", is the ninth and last symphony by the Czech composer. It was published by the author as Symphony n. 5 because the first four symphonies were not considered by him and published posthumously.

The symphony was composed between December 19, 1892 and May 24, 1893 in New York. Not wanting his work to be identified as an American symphony, the title From the New World was added by the composer at the last minute, before sending the score to the conductor for rehearsals. The symphony was premiered at Carnegie Hall on December 16 of that same year by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Anton Seidl, immediately achieving enormous success.

Following an invitation from his family, he spent the summer of 1893 in the Czech-speaking community of Spillville, Iowa, where he composed two of his most famous chamber works, the String Quartet in F major, Op. 96 ???Americano??? and the Quintet in E flat major for strings op. 97.

In the United States he also attended a performance of a cello concerto by the composer Victor Herbert. Dvo??ák was so enthralled by the possibilities that the combination of cello and orchestra offered that he himself wrote a similar work in 1895, the Concerto in B minor for cello and orchestra. Since then the concert, considered one of the best of its kind, has grown in popularity and is now performed very often. Dvo??ák left unfinished a work for the same ensemble, the Concerto in A major for cello and orchestra (1865), which was completed and orchestrated by the German composer Günter Raphael between 1925 and 1929 and by Jarmil Burghauser in 1952.