A.dvorak

Robert Schumann, a versatile, well-educated young artist destined for great things, a man whose music has always amazed with its extent and profundity … and also a person of delicate psyche, which many a time led him to the very border between life and death.

Robert Schumann, a versatile, well-educated young artist destined for great things, a man whose music has always amazed with its extent and profundity … and also a person of delicate psyche, which many a time led him to the very border between life and death. He composed the Piano Quartet in C minor, his first piece of this ilk, at the age of 18, and although, notwithstanding his original intention, he would never remake it into a symphony, he still had it on his mind some 20 years later: "I vividly recollect a passage in one of my works (1828), which I thought was romantic, with a spirit different to that of old music that appeared to me as though opening up a new poetic life." The Piano Quartet in E flat major, Op. 47, already attests to Schumann's compositional mastery, with its idiom inspired by Bach and Beethoven yet speaking in a clearly singular language. The 1853 Märchenerzählungen (Fairy Tale Narrations), was one of the composer's last happy creative upswings, written shortly before he attempted suicide by jumping from a bridge into the river Rhine with the aim to put an end to his unbearable mental torment. The Dvořák Piano Quartet's album spans the entire arch of Schumann's work: the beginning, the peak and the end. Just like all his music, it shows how immense beauty is often close to pain and suffering.

The Dresdner Philharmonie and Marek Janowski present a recording of Antonin Dvorak's Stabat Mater, together with the MDR Leipzig Radio Choir, Hanna-Elisabeth Muller (soprano), Roxana Constantinescu (mezzo-soprano), Christian Elsner (tenor) and Tareq Nazmi (bass).

Antonín Dvořák is revered as one of the greatest composers of late 19th-century Romanticism. He is celebrated for the kind of poignant melodies redolent of Czech folk music found in the utterly charming Bagatelles and Rondo – the haunting tunes and harmonic twists of which represent the distinctive style that brought him international fame. Less known is that during the years 1868–70 Dvořák composed in a style so wild for the time that it foreshadowed the modernistic innovations of Schoenberg and his contemporaries. Dvořák’s Second Quartet reveals fascinating examples of early experimentation before his transition into the harmonious Slavic style for which he is so beloved.

Antonín Dvořák is revered as one of the greatest composers of late 19th-century Romanticism.

The first in a new cycle of Dvořák symphony recordings, ‘Dvořák: Symphonies 5 & 6’ is the second release from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and its Chief Conductor and Artistic Advisor, Jaime Martín, on the MSO’s own recordlabel.

The first in a new cycle of Dvořák symphony recordings, ‘Dvořák: Symphonies 5 & 6’ is the second release from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and its Chief Conductor and Artistic Advisor, Jaime Martín, on the MSO’s own recordlabel.