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Dvorak: Symphony No. 7; Scherzo capriccioso on CD

The Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra enjoyed a long and

intensive artistic collaboration, which came to an abrupt end with Haitink's death in October 2021. BRKLASSIK now presents outstanding and previously unreleased live recordings of their concerts from past

years. This recording of Dvorak's Seventh Symphony documents a concert given in March 1981 in the

Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz. The "Scherzo capriccioso" is a studio recording, also from March

1981.

Following the success of Antonin Dvorak's first visit to London in 1884, the London Philharmonic Society

asked him to return the following year and to compose a new symphony for the occasion. It was an

honourable request - after all, the London Philharmonic Society had commissioned Beethoven's Ninth

Symphony six decades earlier! When Dvorak began sketching out the symphony on December 13, 1884, he

was well aware of the high expectations involved - both his own and those of others. Most music critics

and Dvorak biographers, however, have struggled with the interpretation of this exceptional piece. For

example, it has been interpreted "politically" against the background of the growing German-Czech

tensions of those years. But the existential power of the D minor Symphony - it's anger, it's expansive

pessimism, i.e. it's confessional character - may also derive from the biography and personality of it's

composer, which were probably far more complex, painful and problematic than any "Bohemian idyll" we

might assume. Even in Dvorak's Eighth Symphony, which is considered to be more cheerful, and in his last

symphony, "From the New World", one can still detect a more or less latent tendency towards tragic

longing. The world premiere of the Seventh Symphony took place on April 22, 1885 in London, with the

composer conducting. It became one of Dvorak's greatest successes.

Dvorak's Scherzo capriccioso of 1883 is certainly more than just a filler on this CD. The fact that it is more

dramatic and passionate than it's playful title suggests is probably due to the fact that it was written at a

time of crisis in the composer's life. The work is an elaborate composition of convincing craftsmanship