Building a Library
Antonín Dvo ák Dvo ák’s lively Eighth flew o the page in more ways than one, says Terry Williams, as he gives his spotter’s guide to the best recordings
Terry Williams on Dvo ák’s Symphony No. 8
The work
‘They are the real masters. Before I die, I shall write a bird symphony.’ So promised Antonín Dvo ák, ardent nationalist, pigeon-fancier, train-spotter, devoted family man and, following the recent death of Bed ich Smetana, Bohemia’s foremost living composer.
This was in 1889, four years after
Dvo ák had given the triumphant premiere of his Seventh Symphony in London, at the invitation of the Royal Philharmonic Society. It secured for him the international recognition previously denied him when his sunny Sixth Symphony of 1881 was to have been premiered by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor Hans Richter, had an anti-czech faction within the orchestra not vetoed what would have been a considerable coup for the then 40-year-old composer.
Celebrated and loved in his own country, Dvo ák was still comparately little known abroad, except for his sets of Slavonic Dances, mostly in their piano-duet format. His newly built rural home in Vysoká u P íbram , 45 miles south-west of Prague, provided the ideal environment for the serious task he had set himself: to compose a symphony ‘different from all other symphonies.’ He had decided to break away from the influences of Schumann, Brahms and even his beloved Schubert in order to discover his own symphonic voice.
From the end of August 1889, Dvo ák worked at a tremendous pace. Ideas seemed to tumble out, and he completed what is the most Bohemian-sounding of his nine symphonies in just over two months. He conducted the orchestra of the National Theatre of Prague in the work’s premiere at the beginning of February 1890. Whether the Eighth ultimately measured up to the composer’s initial vision of a ‘bird symphony’ we shall never know, but the scattering of birdsong throughout the score is unmistakable.
The first movement features some of Dvo ák’s most imaginative musical landscape painting
The opening melody was an inspired afterthought, so seductive that there is a temptation to play it as a slow introduction, which it is not. (Dvo ák liked it so much that he brought it back in the development section, cleverly disguised as an exposition repeat.) Still in tempo, a jaunty solo flute chirps up, the first brief snatch of birdsong before the Allegro proper takes wing. Featuring some of Dvo ák’s most imaginative musical landscape painting, with its intermittent summer sunshine, scudding clouds and the ever-present threat of a thunderstorm, the Allegro con brio and Adagio which follow anticipate his awakened interest in what the tone poem had to offer as a format – this, as we shall see, was an avenue that he would follow in years to come.
While the Seventh Symphony casts a dark shadow, the Eighth is considered
much lighter in overall outlook. But, for all its high spirits, it too has its darker side. In meteorological terms, the opening movement may best be described as ‘changeable’. Dvo ák’s woodland birds sing sad songs in the Adagio second movement, a miniature tone poem in itself. Here, the atmosphere is one of an uneasy calm; apprehension and uncertainty accompany the listener into the shadows occasionally relieved by glimpses of bright sunlight.
Whereas the third movement of the Sixth features the stomping Bohemian furiant and that of the Seventh a vivacious scherzo, for the Eighth Dvo ák provides a leisurely G minor dance, somewhere between a Viennese waltz and an Austrian ländler, which frames a gently rocking Trio section. After a reprise of the Allegretto grazioso, an up-tempo transformation of the Trio brings the third movement to a brisk close.
The finale begins with a trumpet fanfare. Almost inaudible drum taps then herald a glorious cello tune which is silenced by a blaze of high spirits from the full orchestra. Essentially, what follows is a set of variations which includes a virtuoso flute solo and a passage which, to this writer at least, always brings to mind the popular British music hall act Wilson, Keppel and Betty’s (in)famous mock-egyptian sand dance routine. The glorious Coda is, perhaps, the most uplifting conclusion to any symphony since Beethoven’s Seventh in 1813.
So, at the finish, Dvo ák Eighth Symphony appears to be all sunshine and blue skies – the audience at its premiere certainly gave it a warm reception, as did those at subsequent performances in Germany, Austria and England.
Subsequently, the triumphant 1893 premiere in New York of Symphony
No. 9, subtitled ‘From the New World’, seemed to seal, once and for all, Dvo ák’s international reputation as a composer of symphonies. More than the Eighth, perhaps, it comes closest to his original idea of a ‘bird symphony’, and hearing the Eighth and Ninth in succession leads one to wonder where might Dvo ák have taken us with a Tenth Symphony. By now, however, he had decided to turn his attention to the symphonic poem instead.
Turn the page to discover the recommended recordings of Dvo ák’s Symphony No. 8