Download Antonín Dvořák - Chicago Symphony Orchestra

PROGRAM NOTES
by Phillip Huscher
Antonín Dvořák
Born September 8, 1841, Mühlhausen, Bohemia (now Nelahozeves, Czech Republic).
Died May 1, 1904, Prague.
Romance in F Minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 11
Dvořák originally composed this music in September and October 1873 as the slow movement of a string
quartet in F minor; he rescored it for violin and orchestra sometime before December 1877. The date of
the first performance is not known. The orchestra consists of pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons,
and horns, with strings. Performance time is approximately twelve minutes.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s first subscription concert performances of Dvořák’s Romance for
Violin and Orchestra were given at Orchestra Hall on March 9, 10, 11, and 17, 1995, with Francis Akos as
soloist and Daniel Barenboim conducting.
Antonín Dvořák wasn’t the first composer to reject the family business for a life in music. Robert
Schumann was the only one of four brothers to abandon his father’s book publishing company for another
career. Hector Berlioz attended medical school to please his father, Dr. Louis Berlioz, before announcing
that he intended to be a composer. František Dvořák, a butcher in a village just north of Prague, also
expected his son to continue in the trade. František played the zither and even wrote a few tunes for the
local band, but he didn’t think of composing as an occupation. He was irate when his thirteen-year-old
son dropped out of his apprenticeship as a butcher and moved to nearby Zlonice to study music.
Antonín Dvořák learned to play the violin as a small boy, and he composed marches and waltzes for the
village band. In Zlonice, he studied piano, organ, and viola, eventually becoming a decent enough violist
to earn a living as an orchestra musician when he couldn’t make any money from his compositions. After
he moved to Prague in 1857, he became principal viola in the orchestra for the new Provisional Theater
(later the National Theater). For the rest of his life, he treasured the memory of playing a concert there in
1863 under his idol, Richard Wagner. In 1871, Dvořák left the orchestra to devote more time to
composition, but he soon realized that he would have to teach to get by. For many years, his father
doubted the wisdom of his son’s choice of music over the life of a butcher.
Then in 1873, Dvořák’s works began to attract attention. The successful premiere of his patriotic cantata
Heirs of the White Mountain on March 9 launched his fame in his homeland. In September and October,
he composed a string quartet in F minor, from which he later transcribed the slow movement as the
Romance for violin and orchestra that is played at these concerts. Later that year, he married Anna
Cermáková, the sister of the Prague actress Josefina, who had, nearly a decade before, rebuffed his
advances. (Like Mozart and Haydn, he married not his first love, but her sister.)
In 1874, Dvořák took stock of his situation: he had begun to taste success; his wife was pregnant with
their first child; and he looked forward to the pleasures, comforts, and traditions of family life. But he
craved recognition and he needed money. In July, he entered fifteen of his newest works in a competition
for the Austrian State Music Prize, a government award designed to assist struggling young artists. The
judges were Johann Herbeck, the director of the Imperial Opera in Vienna; Eduard Hanslick, a man of
famous, often caustic, opinions, and one of the most influential critics of the nineteenth century; and,
sitting on the panel for the first time, Johannes Brahms, the biggest name in Viennese music. Dvořák won
the first prize of four hundred gulden, and he felt a kind of encouragement and validation that money can’t
buy. The citation praised his “genuine and original gifts,” and noted, not unfairly, that he possessed “an
undoubted talent, but in a way which as yet remains formless and unbridled.” (He competed and won
again the next three years in a row.)
By this time, Dvořák began to go through his manuscripts, pitching early works that no longer met his own
standards and trying to get his best music performed. When no one would play the F minor string quartet
that he had written in 1873, he salvaged the lyrical slow movement and rescored it for violin solo and
piano as a perfect miniature for the home parlor. He also made a version for violin and orchestra,
confident—despite the evidence—that symphony orchestras would be eager to play his music. In
Dvořák’s original movement, marked Andante con moto, a lovely, virtually seamless violin melody rides
over gentle chords and rocking arpeggios. In the Romance, Dvořák expanded its gracious dimensions,
adding a generous introduction, and colored the accompaniment with the warm tones of winds and horns.
It’s still a small work in scale and intention, but it’s without doubt one of his most glorious melodic
creations.
Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
© Chicago Symphony Orchestra. All rights reserved. Program notes may be reproduced only in their
entirety and with express written permission from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
These notes appear in galley files and may contain typographical or other errors. Programs subject to
change without notice.
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