Dvo?ák Symphony No. 7
ANTONIN DVORAK 1841-1904
Symphony no. 7 in D minor Opus 70
Allegro maestoso
Poco adagio
Scherzo: Vivace
Finale: Allegro
By the early 1880s Dvorák had become established as a composer in Bohemia, Germany and Austria, but it was his visits to England that brought him truly international fame. This symphony, commissioned by the Philharmonic Society in London, was first performed in St. James's Hall on 22nd April 1885, under the composer's direction, and was an immediate success. Dvorák, by his own admission, had aimed at the stars. In a letter to a friend he wrote:-"everywhere I go, I think of nothing else but my work, which must be such as to shake the world, and with God's help it will be so".
Above a drum roll, a tremolo on the double basses and a sustained note on the horns, violas and cellos give out the first theme of the fine and stormy first movement. The genius of this particular subject is that while it has all the necessary potential for sonata development, including the highly dramatic figure with which it culminates, it also preserves the sense of songfulness so characteristic of Dvorák at his most natural. The dark foreboding element in this idea lightens for a moment when the theme is heard on clarinets in thirds, but the dramatic figure more or less immediately explodes out again with enormous force, plunging into the subdominant of G minor, leading in turn to the lyrical second subject in B flat, which is itself the relative major of G minor.
The development section is very short and reiterates over and over again the clinching semiquavers from the end of the first subject. Woodwind and horns carry the burden of the music until the full orchestra rises to the peak climax of the movement which is also the point of recapitulation. The coda begins with a furious intensity but gradually subsides to a drum roll and sustained horn note with which the movement began, ending with a whisper.
The slow movement is without doubt one of Dvorák's greatest. It begins in B flat, the key of the second subject group of the first movement, and the tension is heightened by the scoring, in which Dvorák avoids the use of the warmest register of strings, and writes extensively for woodwind. The only truly lyrical passage for strings occurs later in the movement when the cellos sing the romantic second half of the opening tune.
There is nothing at all light-hearted about the scherzo, but rather a restless energy that is hardly abated in the trio. Violins and violas have the staccato top tune, a broken theme in 3/2 rhythm, whilst cellos and basses have below it a legato counter melody in 6/4. As might be expected, the tunes are reversed when repeated. Apart from short passages in which solo horns, trumpets or cellos emerge, the trio, conspicuously restless in tonality, is scored for woodwind with string accompaniment.
The broad song-like theme with which the last movement begins is clearly of national origin, and the brass, so sparingly used before, now make a martial appearance. A phrase, strongly marked, which comes in the strings shortly after the trumpet calls, is much used in the development, and at one point the bold opening theme is made to sound exquisitely poetical by violins and flute. At the end, Dvorák gathers all his forces together for the splendid affirmation of D major, in the very last bars, in which tragedy is finally resolved into triumph.
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