Dvořák: Symphonies Nos. 3 + 4

Antonín Dvo?ák made his breakthrough from the anonymity of the Prague music scene in 1873 with his Third Symphony. Having previously lived primarily on his salary as an orchestral violist, at the beginning of his thirties he now received the status of a national composer. Dvo?ák's Third Symphony, premiered by Smetana in 1874, made his name a household name. The introductory theme of the first movement already demonstrates what a gifted melodist the young Dvo?ák was. The similarity between Dvo?ák's Third and Fourth Symphonies supports the fact that both works appeared in a joint first edition "from the composer's estate" in 1911 by the Simrock publishing house (Berlin and Leipzig). Here too, Dvo?ák succeeded in creating a prototype of a national symphony: the journey from the passionate unrest of the beginning to the glorious future of the Czech people in the finale can easily be attributed to the work as a program. As with the previous recordings of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie under Karel Mark Chichon, one can look forward to extremely passionate and meticulously detailed interpretations of the two symphonies.