Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 5 in F major op. 76, played by the WDR Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Ruth Reinhardt. Recorded live on 22.02.2024 at the WDR Funkhaus.

Antonín Dvořák - Symphony No. 5 in F major op. 76

00:00:00 I. Allegro, ma non troppo
00:13:24 II. Andante con moto
00:20:44 III. scherzo. Allegro scherzando
00:28:03 IV. Finale. Allegro molto

WDR Symphony Orchestra
Ruth Reinhardt, conductor

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Introduction to the work:

The longing for home is reflected in hardly any other composition as passionately and vividly as in Antonín Dvořák's symphony "From the New World". Officially, the music tells of the composer's American adventure between 1892 and 1895, but it also reflects his great homesickness, which he gave in to a year before his contract as director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York ended and traveled back to his Czech homeland.

Twenty years earlier, the 33-year-old Dvořák did not really envision his later fame. But he already had a slight premonition, as he had been awarded a scholarship for the first time in 1874 - by the Austro-Hungarian state. The commission in Vienna was very enthusiastic about Dvořák's achievements. And so, in the summer of 1875, the young composer was highly motivated and composed his fifth symphony in just six weeks. He had retreated to Central Bohemia for this, to the small village of Vysoká u Příbramě. And the results were impressive. When Brahms brought Dvořák to the attention of his publisher Fritz Simrock two years later, he printed this symphony, among others. In order to give his new protégé the best chance on the market, Simrock embellished Dvořák's compositional record: he published the Fifth as No. 3 and gave it the significantly higher opus number 76 instead of the originally intended 24.

Even if the Fifth Symphony cannot quite keep up with Nos. 7 to 9, Dvořák made an almost quantum leap compared to its predecessors - both formally and in terms of the explored instrumentation. The Fifth has occasionally been described as his "pastoral". It owes this quite profanely to its origins in nature. And the beginning in the clarinets also exudes a clearly rural mood. At the premiere in March 1879, the Prague audience applauded warmly, but not necessarily frenetically. Dvořák invested a great deal of diligence and energy in the symphony "From the New World" before it was acclaimed.

(Text: Otto Hagedorn)