Recorded
in 1938, released as HMV DB.3685-3689
Matrix numbers: 2EA.7160-7169, all first takes except side five,
take two
Download ID: 250764
(Duration
35'38")
Play
sample movement:
This recording
was made at the same sessions which brought Talich's marvellous reading
of the 6th Symphony (PASC047), at London's Abbey
Road studios in 1938, and is not only a particularly great performance,
virtually all done in one take, but is one that Talich never had the opportunity
to remake.
It has
been noted that some non-Czech conductors can render the Symphony in a
somewhat Brahmsian fashion; not Talich - this is purest Dvorak as delivered
by a conductor who had known the composer and heard him conduct. This
recording, surely, is the closest reflection we have to the music as heard
and conceived by its composer, with the Czech Philharmonic on absolutely
top form.
Written
in 1884-5 for the Philharmonic Society of London, the Sixth Symphony,
then numbered second in Dvorak's canon (and not renumbered until well
after this recording was made), was premièred under the composer's
baton in London on 22nd April, 1885, and soon became a popular favourite
in England. Writing some seventy years later, the authors of 1955's The
Record Guide note: "After No. 5 [the then numbering of the
'New World' Symphony], this is unquestionably Dvorak's finest symphony,
and some musicians prefer it even to the 'New World'. It is swarthy music,
with tragedy lurking in the background - and unusual mood for the happy-natured
Dvorak; but the material, which is very fully and imaginatively worked,
is deeply characteristic."
