Latest Release
- AUG 7, 2024
- 1 Song
- Classical Lines · 1989
- Slavonic Dance No. 2, Op. 72 - Single · 2023
- Sinael Jazz Symphony / Česká škola (Czech Music School) · 2013
- Chromium x Classics, Vol. II · 2021
- Classical Masterpieces – Dramatic Classics · 2000
- classical music but it's lofi for study · 2024
- classical music but it's lofi for study · 2024
- 兎、波を走る オリジナルサウンドトラック · 2023
- American Panorama · 1990
- High Energy Classical Workout · 1987
Essential Albums
- The master cellist’s border-blurring ensemble examines a deceptively single question: Where is home? Joined by heavyweight guests (including Rhiannon Giddens, Bill Frisell, Sarah Jarosz, and Gregory Porter), the multicultural collective addresses the question in a gorgeous tapestry of musical dialects. The combination of original and traditional works range from spare, sweet folk songs (like the spry Appalachian lilt of “Little Birdie” and mournful “Sadia Jana”) to virtuosic new compositions. None is more lovely than “Going Home,” an exquisite interpretation of the lento from Dvorak’s New World Symphony, rendered as a bi-lingual Mandarin-English duet by Abigail Washburn and Wu Tong.
- It’s no surprise that Rafael Kubelik—a onetime conductor of the Czech Philharmonic—would have a feel for the lyricism of Dvořák’s music, but his interpretations of the composer’s final two symphonies still surpass any expectations with their utter rightness. His reading of the popular Symphony No. 9 is distinguished, but the real treat on this collection is a graceful performance of the lesser-known Symphony No. 8. Here, Kubelik and the Berliner Philharmoniker players sound invigorated by the pastoral qualities of the “Adagio,” as well as the many twists and turns of the work’s final movement.
- 2024
Artist Playlists
- The composer who gave us the New World—one of classical music's most-performed pieces.
- Venture off the beaten path and seek out the lesser-known music of a great composer.
About Antonín Dvořák
Born the son of a butcher-innkeeper in the rural countryside north of Prague, Bohemia, in 1841, Dvořák defied his humble beginnings to become one of the leading nationalist composers of his day. He honed his composing skills while playing viola in the Prague National Theatre Orchestra, emerging in the mid-1870s with his first bona fide masterpieces, the Serenade for Strings Op. 22 and Symphony No. 5 Op. 76 (both 1875). However, it was his first set of eight Slavonic Dances Op. 46 (1878) that catapulted him from gifted provincial to international celebrity. Like Tchaikovsky, he fused folkish melodic enchantment and dance-like rhythmic vitality, most famously in his “New World” Symphony Op. 95 (1893), written during a three-year stay in the United States, which also inspired his “American” String Quartet Op. 96 (1893) and Cello Concerto Op. 104 (1894-95). Returning to the Czech homeland in 1895, Dvořák saw out his final years (he died in 1904 at age 62) with a series of late masterworks, including the opera Rusalka (1900), full of exquisite melodic subtlety and expressive intensity. For all his creative genius, Dvořák remained an essentially modest man at heart. “I am just a plain Czech musician,” he reflected toward the end of his life. “Disliking exaggerated humility and despite the fact that I have moved a little in the great musical world, I remain what I always was: a simple Czech musician.”
- BORN
- 1841
- GENRE
- Classical