Antonin Dvorak

Antonín Dvořák was born in Nelahozeves, north of Prague, in September 1841, the son of a village butcher and innkeeper. He studied at the Prague Organ School from 1857, and worked as a violist in the Bohemian Provisional Theatre orchestra from 1862 to 1871, playing under Smetana among others. His early compositions attracted little attention until the Austrian State Stipendium awarded him in 1874 brought him to the attention of Brahms — who introduced him to his own publisher Simrock and effectively launched his international career.

The *Slavonic Dances* (1878) made him famous across Europe almost overnight. There followed nine symphonies, the Cello Concerto, the Violin Concerto, the *Stabat Mater*, the *Requiem*, the operas *Rusalka* and *The Jacobin*, and a substantial chamber output including the *American* String Quartet. From 1892 to 1895 he served as Director of the National Conservatory in New York at the invitation of Jeannette Thurber, where he composed the Ninth Symphony (*From the New World*), the *American* Quartet and the Cello Concerto, and where he urged American composers to find their own voices in their native folk traditions.

Dvořák returned to Prague in 1895 and was appointed director of the Prague Conservatory. He died there in May 1904. Music Preserved’s archive includes a substantial range of his symphonic, chamber and operatic work.