Dvorak: Complete Symphonies, Slavonic Dances, Etc

“When it comes to conducting Dvořák, José Serebrier isn't afraid to get mud on his boots,” declared Gramophone magazine of the legendary maestro. A multiple-GRAMMY winner with more than 300 releases to his discography, Serebrier has a special affinity for Slavic music. But until recently he had recorded only six of Dvořák’s nine symphonies. This has been remedied with a newly recorded Complete Symphonies Cycle with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, in which he adds symphonies 1, 4 and 5 to his Warner Classics catalog. This long-awaited set also features a variety of other concert pieces; among them a selection of Dvořák’s lively, nationalist-driven Slavonic Dances, as well as the wonderfully lyrical Legends, charming tone poems that reveal the composer’s mastery of shorter forms. In the booklet notes, Maestro Serebrier explains that Dvořák’s Symphony No. 1 “The Bells of Zlonice” was composed for a competition in early 1865 but the score was never returned to the composer and he never heard it performed. It was re-discovered in 1923 and given its premiere in 1936. Serebrier, convinced of “some glaring harmonic errors in the last movement,” consulted with music publishers, musicologists and historians, and with the Dvořák manuscript library in Prague, before correcting these. He believes Dvořák would have done the same had he heard the work. The conductor and composer José Serebrier was born in Montevideo, Uruguay and studied at the Curtis Institute of Music with Antal Doráti and Pierre Monteux. The great Leopold Stokowski, who premiered Serebrier’s First Symphony and took him on as Associate Conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra, hailed his young protégé as “the greatest master of orchestral balance.” Serebrier will conduct in New Brunswick, Canada in July and at Yale University in September.

Price: $62.98