Early Dvorak Symphonies--and More

No one could have predicted a great future as a composer for Antonin Dvorak on the basis of his first two symphonies, both written in 1865 when he was 24 years old. A future as a butcher, following in his father’s footsteps, perhaps.

His first two are the longest of Dvorak’s nine symphonies, each lumbering to its finish after 50-odd minutes of repetition (of ideas that hardly begged to be stated even once), halting development and a textural density beside which Bruckner’s symphonies sound like Classical chamber music. Lots of enthusiasm, however--for Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn.

We owe the recorded presence of both works to the benign notion that recordings should give us a complete, warts-and-all view of a composer--indeed, a comprehensive history of music that is not restricted to the “great” composers.

And to fulfill that mission we have appointed--created?--a conductor, the Soviet-Estonian emigre, Neeme Jarvi. Jarvi has been entrusted with the representation on compact disc of the symphonies of the marginal masters, having given us the complete Sibelius (for BIS), Prokofiev (for Chandos), Glazunov (for Orfeo), Rimsky-Korsakov and Berwald (both for Deutsche Grammophon). Also, for Chandos, he is working his way through Shostakovich as his Dvorak cycle nears completion. Obviously, a handy man to have around.

While Jarvi and the Scottish National Orchestra are unable to make a convincing case for Dvorak’s Second Symphony (with the later, superior Third Slavonic Rhapsody on Chandos 8589), they do minimize its shortcomings with vigorous, precise execution. Which is more than can be said for Vaclav Neumann and his Czech Philharmonic; conductor and orchestra (on Supraphon 2253) dawdle their way sloppily through it--as well as the recently released Symphony No. 1 (Supraphon 2143) and, indeed, the entire Dvorak Nine, which they have now committed to compact disc.

The Third and Fourth symphonies, written a decade later, are immeasurably stronger: richly tuneful (although not as yet with a specifically Czech tunefulness), rhythmically intense, sonorously orchestrated and showing considerable formal control.

Both show an affinity for Wagner--the Third was clearly written under the shadow of “Tannhauser” while the scherzo of the Fourth threatens to turn into, not just to resemble, the dances from Act III of “Die Meistersinger.” But each possesses sufficient personality to merit the listener’s attention.

Again, Jarvi and his Scotsmen prove skillful executants of the Third Symphony, part of a fetching Dvorak program (on Chandos 8575), which also contains the “Carnival” Overture and the Symphonic Variations.

In the 1960s, conductor Istvan Kertesz and the London Symphony brought early Dvorak to an unprecedently wide international audience through their recorded symphony cycle, the first in stereo; now the gem of that venture, the Fourth Symphony, has been reissued in compact disc format (London 417 596). The performance has lost none of its exhilarating freshness while the coupling, from the same artists, is another treasure: the most imaginative of Dvorak’s late, folk-inspired symphonic poems, “The Golden Spinning Wheel.”

“The Golden Spinning Wheel” is also the centerpiece of an attractive two-CD set (Supraphon 2196/7) of the five symphonic poems Dvorak wrote toward the end of his life, the others being “The Midday Witch,” “The Water Goblin,” “The Wild Dove”--all pungently dancey evocations of folk ballads--and a programless blob of bombastic balderdash called “The Heroic Song.”

All are led with easygoing affection by Bohumil Gregor: none of Kertesz’s hectic drama here, but rather an allure that derives chiefly from the idiomatic sound of the Czech Philharmonic, with its intensely woody clarinets and oboes, its vibrant brasses. Not one of the world’s great spit-and-polish orchestras but still one of its most distinctive.

Additional Dvorak on CD:

The complete Slavonic Dances, in their original piano four-hands form, zestfully done by the British team of Peter Noke and Helen Krizos (Hyperion 66204).

A first recording of the Urtext of the familiar Opus 22 Serenade for Strings--the published edition deletes about 120 measures of expendable music--with the Opus 44 Wind Serenade, both rather placidly presented by members of the London Philharmonic under Christopher Hogwood (London 417 452).

And, again from Hyperion (66287), a small British label that quietly turns out one superior recording after another, the composer’s two Piano Quartets, the splendidly dramatic, mature work in E-flat and the youthful, endearingly overwrought Quartet in D, both played with fire and finesse by the London-based ensemble that tours with a portable concert hall, the geodesic dome from which it takes its name: Domus.