Symphony No 6 in D major, Op. 60
Allegro non tanto
Adagio
Scherzo (Furiant): Presto
Finale: Allegro con spirito
Dvorak had already completed five symphonies and was 36 years old when, in 1877, he won the Austrian State Prize for the third time. Johannes Brahms, who was one of the judges, was so impressed with his Moravian Duets that he urged them upon Simrock, his publisher, urging him to publish them forthwith. Simrock went even further, and commissioned from Dvorak the first set of Slavonic Dances - a farsighted move which was to bring him a small fortune in royalties and Dvorak international fame. Within two years his works were being performed across Germany and Europe, and Dvorak’s years of obscurity as a viola player in the Prague Opera orchestra were at an end. But this was not enough for him. His success had been attained with colourful, "national" works, novelties which charmed Western European ears with their exotic Slav melodies. Dvorak was a proud and fervent Czech patriot; but he also belonged to the great Central European musical tradition which looked to the symphonic works of Beethoven and Brahms as examples. When, in 1880, the Vienna Philharmonic and the conductor Hans Richter asked him to write a symphony for them, Dvorak finally had his chance to prove himself as a master symphonist in the Beethoven tradition. He wrote the Sixth Symphony in seven weeks, finishing it on the 15th October. Ironically, the Vienna Philharmonic then insisted on postponing the premiere - perhaps the riotous cross-rhythms of the Scherzo proved too much for that notoriously conservative ensemble. Instead, the new symphony was premiered in Prague on 25 March 1881, and within a year it had been performed in half a dozen different countries, including Britain and the USA.
The Sixth Symphony’s rapid success was richly deserved. Dvorak produced in it his first truly cohesive and satisfactory symphony, and, arguably, an even greater, more perfect work than the more popular Eighth and Ninth Symphonies, written when success had made him less self-critical. Dvorak’s debt to his great symphonic predecessors is clearly shown - to Beethoven’s Ninth, in the Adagio, to Schumann’s Fourth, in the coda of the Finale, and above all to his benefactor and idol Brahms, to whose Second Symphony he pays explicit homage in the outer movements, and in the very key of the whole symphony. His Czech heritage is also proudly displayed - most evidently in the Scherzo, a Czech Furiant, or Swaggerer’s Dance, but also in the first two movements, in which themes that could have been taken straight from the Slavonic Dances pour out in full-blooded lyrical profusion. Yet all these elements are worked into a thoroughly satisfying, truly symphonic whole - a compelling musical argument which moves with unflagging energy and conviction.
The opening of the symphony is pastoral. Answering phrases in the upper and lower strings evoke vistas of "Bohemia’s Woods and Meadows" before swelling to a grandioso climax. Then follows a long group of melodies, by turns dance-like and lyrical, and a closely-worked development which opens with one of the most imaginative passages Dvorak ever wrote - fragments of themes rise from a deep, mysterious pedal note, in a passage comparable to Beethoven or even Wagner. After a further "Eroica"-like climax the recapitulation runs its course, and the movement ends in sunlit celebration. The opening of the B flat major Adagio immediately evokes Beethoven, but Dvorak follows it with a sweetly lyrical movement which could be by no other composer - in its glowing ‘cello and horn writing, its sudden outbursts of rustic high-spirits, the quiet polka-rhythms which the timpani cannot resist adding in the background, and in the exquisite coda for woodwinds and horns, which brings the movement to a close in the tranquillity of a Bohemian summer night. After this, the fiery Furiant comes as a rude awakening, but this impetuous folk-dance Scherzo, with its dreamy, luminous Trio (containing surely the most romantic solo ever written for the piccolo!) was an instant hit at the symphony’s premiere, and was encored. The Finale opens with a tribute to Brahms, but Dvorak asserts himself unmistakeably at the first climax, again marked grandioso. As in the first movement , the second subject group, by turns songlike and rhythmic, leads to a furiously-worked development with tranquil interludes. At the climax of the recapitulation, the violins break dramatically loose and cascade unaccompanied into a Presto coda, in which all the themes of the movement are built up to a tremendous climax. Without the slightest slackening of momentum the symphony sweeps to a close "with the finality of a work that knew from the outset exactly when its last note was due".
R.G.Bratby, 1997
Copyright Classical Notes.co.uk 2000
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