Photograph of Antonín Dvořák’s funeral in Prague on May 5, 1904 (from Jarmil Burghauser’s catalog of Dvořák’s works and the reason for the “B” catalog numbers)
I have now listened to the final four CDs in the Warner box set of 42 CDs of recordings made by Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. Some readers may recall that, in my last article, Johannes Brahms was allocated only three CDs. That leaves four CDs devoted entirely to Antonín Dvořák, which made for a particularly stimulating conclusion.
The first three of those CDs account for the last three symphonies: the seventh (B. 141) in D minor, the eighth (B. 163) in G major, and the ninth (B. 178) in E minor, usually known by its title “From the New World.” The final CD presents Dvořák’s only piano concerto, B. 63 in G minor with French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard as soloist. Each of these four CDs concludes with a tone poem. In “order of appearance,” these compositions are:
- The Wild Dove (B. 198)
- The Noon Witch (B. 196)
- The Water Goblin (B. 195)
- The Golden Spinning Wheel (B. 197)
I must confess that the first pocket score I ever purchased was for B. 178 (although those catalog numbers were not used at that time). I think it was my father that thought this would be a good start, but he had forgotten that we did not have the music in our record collection. As a result, it was a while before I could put that score to good listening use; but it has now served me well for several decades!
That said, Harnoncourt’s conducting is often as good a “tour” through any piece of music as one would encounter through score-following. Mind you, where Dvořák is concerned, I still treasure my Naxos seventeen-CD box set: The Complete Dvořák Published Orchestral Works. Past encounters with Harnoncourt, on the other hand, are more distant. Ironically, they involve another Warner box set, Gidon Kremer: The Warner Collection, which outdoes the Dvořák box with 21 CDs. However, Harnoncourt appears in this collection in only two of those CDs, one for Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 61 violin concerto in D major and the other for Johannes Brahms’ Opus 77 violin concerto, also in D major, which also includes the Opus 102 “double” concerto in A minor with Clemens Hagen playing cello.
In other words, prior to the release of the Warner box set, it has been about half a decade since I last wrote about my listening experiences of Harnoncourt. On the other hand, the Concertgebouw box covers a decidedly longer period of time. The earliest recordings date back to 1980, and the most recent were recorded in 2001.
The music, on the other hand, is limited to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; but, where most of the composers are concerned, depth matters more than breadth. When it comes to Harnoncourt’s career, he did not retire until December 5, 2015, which was the day before his 86th birthday! He would die the following year, on March 5, 2016.
