Symphony of the Week XII

Antonin Dvorak (1841- 1904)

Symphony No. 1 in C minor (The Bells of Zlonice) op. 3

Back in the time of pandemic, when I first embarked upon what has turned out to be a far more intermittent series than I had intended, my aim was to attempt an exploration of artistic canon-formation by taking an exhaustive look at a particular musical genre - the symphony - from the mid-Nineteenth Century period where it had attained primacy as the most prestigious form of Western musical expression until, well, theoretically the present day. That has involved listening to an awful lot of symphonies - many of them more than once - in order to select those that seemed to me worthy of comment. So, in a token effort to keep things manageable, I imposed a few seemingly arbitrary limits upon the project, most significant of which was restricting it to the work of composers who lived into the 20th Century (defined as starting in 1901).

This restriction meant excluding some favourite pieces (the symphonies of Bizet & Borodin, for example) as well as the symphonic outputs of several figures whom I suspect might have produced work of interest (such as the prolific anti-Wagnerian Frenchman, Benjamin Godard, and the Brahms acolyte, Heinrich von Herzogenberg). It also handily exempted me from having to write about three of the four major late 19th Century composers whose symphonies are central to the modern concert repertoire - Tchaikovsky (d.1893), Bruckner (d.1896) and Brahms (d.1897). Something I am more than pleased about as, much though I revere the music of this trio, its dominant position in the active post-Romantic canon - to the exclusion of just about everything else - is one of the things that is rendering the modern classical tradition stale and moribund.

However, I am also more than pleased that the fourth canonical symphonist of the period - Antonin Dvorak - does come under my remit. Of his nine symphonies, only the last five are performed with any frequency - one of them disproportionately. The others crop up occasionally alongside their partners on record, but in concert halls barely at all. Yes, these early works are in various ways "immature", and the wonderful 5th Symphony certainly does mark a significant advance upon them, but they are not in the least negligible. If Tchaikovsky's First and Third Symphonies can survive as part of a cycle, not to mention Bruckner's Second, First and Zero, then Dvorak's first four certainly should as well.

Possibly part of the reason these early works by a popular composer remain so little known lies in Dvorak's own attempts to police his early output. Late in acquiring wide reputation, he was understandably reluctant for productions of his highly prolific youth to be brought into the light alongside those of his mature mastery. This led to the effective suppression of much delightful music and a catalogue of opus numbers notoriously unhelpful in indicating compositional chronology - a situation not helped by the publisher, Simrock who, amongst other high-handed actions, published Dvorak's symphonies not only incomplete, but misleadingly.

Thus, until the mid-20th Century, it was widely believed that the first of Dvorak symphonies was that currently known as No. 6 in D major, followed by the D minor symphony (no. 7) and then the Fifth in F major, labeled by Simrock as No. 3. The two final symphonies - No. 8 in F major and the New World Symphony were usually referred to as numbers 4 and 5.

Of the early works now accepted as nos 1-4, the last two were premiered successfully in Dvorak's lifetime. No. 3 in Eb Major was conducted by Smetana with the Czech Philharmonic in 1874 and an Austrian State Prize. No. 4, in D minor was belatedly given in 1892 - eighteen years after its composition - under the baton of the composer himself. Dvorak seemed to have held both works in some regard, but Simrock chose not to publish them until 1912 - eight years after their creator's death. The symphony now known as No. 2. in Bb major was given a belated premiere in 1887, when Dvorak expressed embarrassment over it. Very probably he would have destroyed it, had the manuscript not fallen into private ownership.

The First Symphony appears to have been written immediately before the Second in 1865 and Dvorak referred to it with some affection in later life, whilst also admitting he had possibly destroyed it. In fact, the manuscript had been languishing in a Prague second-hand bookshop where, in 1882, it was purchased by a private collector well aware of its significance but - perhaps for that very reason - unwilling to part with it. Not until the mid-1930s was there a public performance, and then with cuts. No one it seems regarded it as much more than a curiosity until Istvan Kertesz recorded it in full as part of his pioneering Dvorak cycle, with the London Symphony Orchestra in 1966.

Yet, even the celebrated efforts of Kertesz failed to bring Dvorak's remarkable first orchestral work into the standard concert repertoire. Perhaps it's sheer length (over 50 minutes, if you take the 1st Movement repeat) puts people off. True, a sense of economy is not exactly a virtue one associates with Dvorak. The breathing space demanded by his wonderfully rich melodic gift often appears in conflict with a natural impulse towards forward momentum. Even works of undoubted stature, such as the Stabat Mater, the 'Cello Concerto, or Russalka, can get bogged down in less than incandescent performances and in a very few early works, such as the 63 minute D major String Quartet (No. 3) of 1870, long-windedness rules. But if this symphony is long-winded, it is rarely bland and never torpid, its astonishingly forceful discourse enhanced by the young Dvorak's remarkably characterful (and at this point largely self-taught) orchestration.

No, I would be inclined to attribute this symphony's neglect to two other factors.

The first, surprisingly perhaps, is a certain melodic anonymity. One rightly thinks of Dvorak as a great tunesmith, but tunes didn't just drop into his head. The piece is by no means as melodically unmemorable as the already alluded to D major Quartet, but stretches of it - notably in the slow movement and Finale - demonstrate that the creation of distinctive melody was something he refined over the course of his career, as he did all aspects of his art. (He was also not above improving upon a "borrowed" melody that caught his ear. Has anyone noticed that the marvellous cantabile theme at figure 4 in the Finale of the 14th Quartet clearly derives from the cigarette girls' chorus of Bizet's Carmen?)

The second, and perhaps decisive factor, is paradoxically the First's very superiority to its three immediate successors. Don't get me wrong, nos 2-4 all make for rewarding listening and are significant milestones in their composer's stylistic evolution but none of them carries quite the same personal charge as the early, strangely isolated blockbuster that proceeded them a wok that, in its lagely succesful balancing of three minor key movements and a major key Finale, offers a mirror anticipation of the entirely successful Fifth - three major movements and a minor Finale.

But to the work itself. The programmatic subtitle, refers to the central Bohemian town of Zlonice, where Dvorak had lived, evidently, not unhappily contemplating a career as a butcher, before finally moving to on to pursue his musical vocation in Prague. It does not appear on the surviving manuscript, but Dvorak certainly associated it with the piece, and not inappropriately. The quietly chiming wind figure set against an obsessive five-note motif in the strings that kicks off the opening Allegro is of clearly bell-like inspiration. It is proceeded by a brief, but forceful statement on unison horns of a bold, heroic theme that acts as a kind of link between sections of the lengthy First Movement, somewhat in the manner of the repeated note fanfare of Thcaikovsky's Fourth. The true first subject, in the strings consisting of a yearning upwards legato answered by downward staccato scales, has a dark, urgent quality, its relentless quick triple time sometimes suggesting Dvorak was attempting a sort of minor key Eroica. The stormy discourse is driven along by the five note motif - often sounding menacingly on the timpani, sometimes pealing out on the horns - and by stirring unisons in the trombones.

In fact, Dvorak's uninhibited writing for the drums and brass is typical of an orchestral imagination that tended rarely to leave any player feeling left out. The second subject is initially assigned to the violins and brings a welcome lyric warmth, if only briefly. On its return in the recapitulation however, it is initially given (perhaps with some personal significance) to Dvorak's own instrument - a solo viola.

In between has come a development that, whatever its noisy excesses, overflows with melodic and rhythmic variety, as well as springing a few surprises, such as the odd relaxation of a mere 20 bars into duple time for a strange polka-like interlude featuring the high register of the violins.

If the ensuing slow movement, with its extended oboe cantilena, is ever so slightly less involving, it is certainly not without moments of characteristic poetry and invention - notably the fanfare like episode for horns and trumpets and the extraordinary passage of unison semiquavers that serves as a kind of mini-cadenza for the entire woodwind section. In the opening bars, the five note motif sounds unobtrusively in the double basses and it crops up again, back on the timps, at the effectively terse conclusion to the busily written Allegretto Third Movement (seemingly added after the other three, but not so you'd notice). The cyclical design is completed in a C major Finale a little let down by its material and some rather forced development, but nonetheless a satisfying conclusion to an impressive whole.

This symphony is not quite a masterpiece, but it is the kind of debut only a very considerable composer could have achieved and for too long it has been hiding in plain sight. If you know it already, I'd be surprised if you didn't agree with me. If you don't, do please check out the link and let those bells sound!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xDwLnPRTTc