Vaclav Talich/Czech Philharmonic - 'Present at the creation.' An orchestra almost literally created to play Dvorak. It's possible that Talich got even the slight deviations from the score from Dvorak himself, and if he didn't, it's still in a style Dvorak would have recognized. By our standards it's a very romantic reading, and if you'll permit a heresy I'll say that it's objectively a bit too much, but Talich almost always 'cuts with the grain' in a way that draws attention to the music's inherent detail rather than to the interpretation. Listeners would have to wait until Harnoncourt to hear a reading of the opening where you feel so many nature effects, and unlike Harnoncourt, Talich has the sense to speed up when things get more turbulent. All throughout makes just about everyone else seem thoughtless in this score he's clearly meditated on for his entire life. The only trouble is that I don't think Dvorak meant anything quite this romantic. Without the consistent rhythmic pulse of a dance, it feels too earnest for Dvorak. Nevertheless, when Talich resolves to dance in the Scherzo, nobody, not even Sejna or Mackerras, can possibly match this expression organic as a Pilsner. A
Sejna/Czech Philharmonic - Even more than Talich, this is the unmatched authenticity of the great Czech tradition. It goes almost exactly at Dvorak's specified metronome markings, with an unmatched feel for Dvorak's folk dance rhythms with absolutely perfect rubato that only exists in the obvious transitional bars of the structure. Other orchestras make Dvorak something gruff - the Czech Philharmonic makes Dvorak a 19th century Mozart - leavening even the biggest climaxes with levitating agility, velvet warmth and spiritual grace with textures vivid enough to eat. The only problem is that there is a level of extremes missing on both ends of the dynamic spectrum which dampens the excitement, and cannot just be explained away by the relatively mediocre mono sound, but rather, the drama is simply provided by the performance going at such lightning motion. This is thing of life, an evolving organism. Just listen to that clarinet wail in the last movement.... This is true music. A+
Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt/NDR Symphony, Hamburg: Wow that's a lot of rubato.... A good faith effort by musically curious North German performers to recreate the Czech style. They make a lot of wonderful Czech noises in the winds and brass, and even if the Hamburg strings can't imitate the inimitable, they have a gemutlichkeit that is entirely in keeping with Dvorak's bittersweet spirit. These were always incredibly underrated musicians, but HSI does not make matters easy in the first two movements for them with his constantly yo-yo'ing pulse. Some of this is clearly a little beyond the orchestra's fingers, and surely they could have gotten the mic closer to the timpani and trombones who barely sound present. Clearly HSI heard what Talich did and wants to chase that air of authenticity when it would probably do him better to just follow the score. I expected something much more restrained and tasteful, but they are making a full court press for schmaltz. It's a very good faith effort from an orchestra that can't possibly have played this work often, but ultimately, this is more a credible impersonation from people who know their Viennese than the real music of a forgotten people. C+
Rafael Kubelik/Vienna Philharmonic - My dirty Dvorak secret. Kubelik is my favorite conductor, and yet I don't like most of his Dvorak. Kubelik is just too tolerant of imprecision and skewed balances for this composer whose every bar dances, a fact made worse by his recording a cycle with the Berlin Philharmonic - the world's least toe-tapping orchestra. Nevertheless (and I'm a minority of one here...) this is easily his best Dvorak 7, with rubato to capture every lyricism and every excitement - even if it's not nearly as natural as in his Mahler and Janacek. Even if Kubelik doesn't always keep them together, the understanding of the Viennese for Dvorak is far, far more innate than in Berlin. The scherzo is incredibly dirty, but it speaks pristine Czech. The Viennese have a bass heavy sound lacking in Prague that adds an entirely welcome darkness. Kubelik stretches the second movement around like Furtwanglerian clay, but the biggest problem, as always in Kubelik's performances, was in the finale. He plays it as a grim piece of romantic tone painting with a lot of rhetorical rubato, when the whole point is that it's a peppy march that houses grim content. Dvorak 7's rhythms smile while its harmonies frown. An experimental Dvorak 7 with interesting ideas, but ultimately, it just wasn't Kubelik's piece. Kubelik was never an 'Upper Case R' Romantic, but a romantic he very much was, and Dvorak was secretly a classicist. Generally speaking, Kubelik's greatest strengths were in grander composers than Dvorak, and even when Dvorak speaks grandly, he speaks with understatement. C-
John Barbirolli/Halle Orchestra - If it were purely an interpretation, if orchestral playing didn't matter, this would without parallel. I don't know what makes Barbirolli's feel for Dvorak so instinctual and beyond the Mahler for which he's so much more famous, but this is perfect for Barbirolli, who, contra his reputation, rarely overstates his case except in the glorious way he lets the strings emote in forte with maximum passion and vibrato. He works to elicit the most incredible dynamic and textural shading, leaves just enough rubato to let the overtones emit their special glow over the orchestra, and lets the pacing simply flow in a manner that never lets go of the ear. It's not like the playing is at all bad, but don't expect real refinements. The only real problem is the brass and particularly the trumpets, which is is as piercing and unbalanced as the rest of the orchestra is beautifully balanced. My guess is Barbirolli just couldn't do anything about it and gave up. Barbirolli turned the strings lack of technical acumen into a virtue, making their naturally dirty sound into folk fiddling. In a way, it all sounds like more like a village band than an orchestra, which is, perhaps, the most authentic sound of all. Interpretation: A++, Overall: A-
Pierre Monteux/London Symphony - I'm not one for Brahmsian Dvorak, but Monteux is Monteux. The LSO of those years was a crude instrument, but Monteux endows them with a sunlit Brahmsian glow which is entirely beyond the Czech Philharmonic's inestimably great capabilities. Monteux was 84 here, and here as everywhere he has no lack of vitality, with rubato all over the place so subtle you'd never notice if you weren't listening for it. The phrases simply rise and fall as though they were assembled with nature's fractals. There is so much gentleness and introspection which a less mature spirit could never find. I do wish Monteux would take a little less time basking in the beauty of the slow movement, but when the playing is this beautiful and overtone rich, you can forgive him. And just in case you think Monteux has lost a step, he explodes in the finale like a rocket at Cape Canaveral, and yet there's the same rubato, with the same knowledge of exactly how to apply it when the spirit changes to maximize lyricism, character, and excitement. There are times when I would rate this as the greatest ever performance, but there are just so many candidates. It's just another day at the office for a conductor who radiated such pure music that every performance is endowed with an ineffable spirituality. A
Constantin Silvestri/Vienna Philharmonic - You really never know what you're going to get with Silvestri. It amazes me that some critics who devalue all sorts of 'emotive' artists do not find Silvestri erratic. Silvestri defines it. In his way, Silvestri's romanticism was as willful as Koussevitzky or Barbirolli. Much of what Silvestri gave us was glorious, some is deliriously wrongheaded - this falls into group 2. On the one hand Vienna Philharmonic makes lovely singing sounds, on the other, they're completely uncoordinated. They do the best they can to respond to what is clearly an enormous number of demands from the front, but Silvestri demands so many things of them that he confuses the hell out of them and can't keep a lot of the thing together - particularly the opening. At any point before 2015, a conservatory orchestra with this level of imprecision would get reamed by its conductor. Of course, the highlight is the slow movement, which for its occasional oddities is absolutely beautiful in its overdone way - Rachmaninovian perhaps.... but for the most part, this performance is just mannered in a composer who does not tolerate mannerism as well as he looks amid and an orchestra that cannot keep up with its conductor. Silvestri was notorious for demanding so much rehearsal that he'd refuse all kinds of engagements if they didn't give it to him, but this sounds like however much rehearsal he got he needed twice as much. There are such truly beautiful lyric things here, but so much of this performance just falls apart. The reason, fundamentally, is that Silvestri doesn't understand that this piece is not lyricism with manic interruptions of drama. The lyricism only truly works when put in a greater context, while Silvestri is trying to savor and illuminate every possible expressive nuance along the way. That sort of mannerism is impossible in such an unmannered composer like Dvorak. D+
Antal Dorati/London Symphony - Dorati, as so often, belies his reputation for aggression, and so does the LSO. Hardly any conductor goes to greater trouble to honor Dvorak's impossibly specific dynamic markings, and reminds us just how much of this work is soft and lyrical even as Dorati, as ever, provides us the full measure of drama. It is a darker vision, full both of visciousness and fragility. Whether at forte or piano, and at the many gradations upon the spectrum, the orchestral balances ('chording') are so exquisitely impeccable. Has any conductor ever thought this deeply about the analytic side of this symphony and made heard its many countermelodies, accompanying motifs, crossrhythms, odd textures? The sudden dramatic tempi changes in the first movement coda are an awkward misfire, but otherwise, what is on hand here is so exquisite. It never seems self-conscious because Dorati balances this fastidious lyricism with white hot rage in the dramatic passages. One of the most poetic Dvoraks ever set down, radiating a deeply unhappy spirit. A-
George Szell/Cleveland Orchestra - A lot of people rate this the greatest Dvorak 7. The 2nd movement IS the greatest set down, with rubato that is.... well it's a revelation. Nobody mixes the pastoral and turbulence like Szell. The rest is not on such a level. The last movement is empty virtuosity that does not even feel exciting amid all that gruffness. It's generally a very aggressive performance that, sadly, has dull sound which doesn't even let its excitement stand on its own merits. It's certainly not bad, the clarity of the Clevelanders is as always a marvel, but as great as alleged it isn't. B-
Leonard Bernstein/New York Philharmonic - Lenny just doesn't really get it. He loves the melody of course, but he doesn't get the irony between song and dance. One just has the sense Bernstein thinks this is a generic romantic work by an unspecified composer - full of big tunes and loud sounds, but subtlety was not exactly Lenny's thing. The more grandiloquent, the better he got, but winking intimacy like Dvorak? D
Suitner/Staatskapelle Berlin - The dirty secret of Dvorak is that Suitner made the best cycle, capturing Dvorak's mixture of song and dance better than any Slavic conductor. 7 is not the absolute highlight (5 and 8), the last movement is simply too slow and sober to capture its turbulence. But the mixture of linear clarity and warmth is so like the Czech Philharmonic, and Suitner makes absolutely clear that Dvorak is the great heir to the Mozart and Schubert he also conducts so well. B-
Karel Ancerl/Czech Philharmonic
Carlo Maria Giulini/London Philharmonic - Once again, I don't like Brahmsian Dvorak, but of course, Giulini's gentle humanity makes it mostly work. Giulini is characteristically slow, and crucially does not let the bass or brass stint on the dramatic weight. Nevertheless, the prevailing spirit, as so often in CMG, is elegiac and glowing, with the most refulgent, overtone laden string sound you will ever hear in this work - including Monteux's LSO. It is particularly moving in the slow movement, too often forgotten but which is the crux of the whole work. It's impossible to overlook here, he stretches it to Brucknerian proportions, making the kinship with Bruckner 6 unmistakable. It's too self-consciously profound to be ideal, this is Giulini after all, but Giulini uses every instant of that extra time for extra weight and passion. Whether this is Dvorak or Brahms or Bruckner, it is so profoundly moving. The problem is, of course, in the later movements. Giulini never passes up an opportunity to sing and passes up every opportunity to dance. Getting Giulini to dance properly is about as likely as getting Pavarotti. No amount of beautiful orchestral glow in the trio can cover up the fact that this is a conductor who doesn't want to have fun. Giulini's romantic splendor is not a substitute for Dvorak's grim ironies. In Giulini, everything means exactly what it says it means. B
Kubelik/Berlin Philharmonic: A performance I despise where Kubelik proves himself a bit of a self-hating skoda. Dvorak 7 is not Wagner, and yet Kubelik plays him with the Berliners as pure Walkure. I just don't get this egregious lapse in judgement. It's dramatic, sure, but Dvorak 7 is not a statement of brooding tragedy. It even has a horrible wrong note at the finale's climax in the brass. I'm not listening to this again. D-
Colin Davis/Concertgebouw: There's nothing to say that the performance itself doesn't say better. It's the other sui generis performance, which captures Dvorak's turbulence as no one else does. The dynamic contrasts are enormous, the sound of the Concertgebouw always alternating between warmth and fury. No performance is as great at showing Dvorak's ironic mix of dance and rage. The Concertgebouw, ever one of the clearest orchestras, displays a very Czech incision, with staccatos that are absolutely together. Few scherzi 'cook' like this - like a jazz band taken wing. The second movement, so clearly recalling Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, has only felt this warm under Giulini. So intense is Davis's involvement that occasionally sections of the Concertgebouw a very little bit of trouble keeping up, but otherwise, it never gets better than this. A+
Rafael Kubelik/Bavarian Radio -
Levine/Chicago Symphony
Vaclav Neumann/Czech Philharmonic The Czech Philharmonic in so much Czech Philharmonicness you have to spell it Ceska (with vowels my keyboard doesn't access). Never has the orchestra sounded riper, piquanter(?), woodlandier,... whatever you want to call it. The only problem is that Vaclav Neumann is clearly as disengaged an interpreter as he is skilled an orchestra builder. There is a certain cynicism in a lot of latter day Czech Dvorak performances. It's just what's expected of them in every tour, and for the #1 Prague orchestra it sounds like a delivery vehicle for gorgeous execution bereft of much insight. You compare this with Sejna and Talich, and it's just autopilot. Like Kubelik, I think Neumann was a much better Mahler conductor. It can't be denied that they make lovely sounds, but this is your pro-forma Dvorak 7. Except for some beautifully eminent contrabassoon and double bass, there's no distinguishing feature except the beautiful particularities of Czech orchestral sound during the Soviet era - captured in more modern sound. I don't doubt that makes this performance perfect in the ears of some, but some of us need a personality amid all the beautiful machinery. If Karajan or Ormandy were Czech, they'd lead a performance like this. I think I listened to the digital one but I'm not putting myself through this twice. C
Christoph von Dohnanyi/Cleveland Orchestra: Look, I'm president of the Dohnanyi fanclub. At this point I think he and Mariss Jansons are the greatest conductors I ever heard live, and it's a sad commentary that people find him heartless. Fastidious he may be, but it's because he's one of those rare musicians who organizes music on a quantum level, and unlike, say, George Szell, consistently uses his analytical abilities to overlay his musicmaking with sincere expression. Emotionally, he is on a such a more sophisticated, specific level than most 'expressive' conductors. Dohnanyi is musicmaking for adults. This isn't just a conductor who thinks about where to play piano or crescendo, but which instruments, the exact sort of bowstroke of the strings and breath from the winds, and how every one of them will affect the music forty minutes later. That sort of depth is so much rarer than you think, and rarer still is a conductor who does it without vitiating the emotional content. Everything is thought through here - harmonies, dynamics, balances, color... with rubato perfectly calibrated to maximize the momentum and not a scintilla more. The only problem is that this is Dvorak - the world's most artless composer, who spontaneously erupts with melody and rhythm. So there are much better Dvorak 7s, no matter what Hurwitz says. Jansons does a similar approach, and there is no questioning where Jansons's heart is here. Dohnanyi deconstructs Dvorak to its bolts, and then reassembles it piece by piece. Every line and chord weighted, every sound scrubbed squeaky clean, but whereas Jansons's heart rings out in full vibration, Dohnanyi here expresses a much more generic character. The skill by which Dohnanyi does all this is uncanny, but except for his red-blooded finale, it's still not Dvorak. Give us Davis a hundred times before this. Davis leads with instinct, not intellect. This approach is perfect for so much else, but Dvorak 7 is not the Leipzig Romantics or Second Viennese School in which Dohnanyi has no peer, and playing him with those accents only represses the work's natural expression. Along with Davis, Dohnanyi gave us the greatest of all Dvorak 6's, but for its many virtues, this is not on so lofty a plain. Otherwise Dohnanyi's Dvorak is senselessly overrated: instead, listen to him do Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Mendelssohn, R. Strauss, Bartok, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Stravinsky, Henze, fuck... listen to nearly anything except the Bohemian stuff... because for some reason his Mahler sucks too. C+
(note from 2025: Going back to this without the pressure of comparative listening was an extremely edifying experience. Long as you didn't have the razor sharp teeth of versions like Davis and Dorati ringing in your ears, there is no lack of primal force or color here. I think the problem I had was that the Cleveland Orchestra has never been a sound that warms to my ears: everything is so 'white', 'treble-heavy', perhaps even without personality. But who can possibly deny that the Cleveland Orchestra has so many other magnificent virtues - precision, virtuosity, linear clarity? In retrospect, I vastly underrated this performance because the Cleveland Orchestra is simply less characterful than European orchestras of similarly sterling reputations. It's a lot easier to forgive lack of color in a composer like Mendelssohn than in Dvorak, and I consequently undervalued all the things that were great about it. And besides, the finale is not just 'red-blooded', it's the most exciting goddamn thing ever. A-)
Wolfgang Sawallisch/Philadelphia Orchestra
Mariss Jansons/Oslo Philharmonic: Since Jansons died I've again become his biggest fan (and that's saying something). I used to think Jansons's essential musicianship was lost on his recordings, but now that we can't hear him live, the care of his recordings have all sorts of qualities I used to not appreciate. In a generation of careful and hard working maestros of understated integrity, no one in his generation but Dohnanyi ever exhibited this level of care; but he was, ultimately, better than Dohnanyi. He did not have Dohnanyi's sophistication and winks, and in the more ironic environs of modernism could seem a little lost; but within Jansons's spider web of rigor was a heart that would melt stone. I don't know if classical music has a performing artist in the recorded era who so united head and heart. Jansons makes us hear so many little details of harmony, counterpoint and texture that no other conductor notices. The dynamic contrasts and warmth of the sound puts all but the Czechs to shame. Jansons puts a few feet wrong here, not because of his hair below average tempi, but because the occasional rubatos seem pasted on rather than organic - when already you have such perfect dynamic and linear control, what use is there in changing tempo? The scherzo is particularly of below average pace - Jansons keeps a tight lid on the abandon so we may hear all those nuances usually lost in the 'shuffle', the result sounds more like a waltz than a furiant, but never in the scherzo have you heard this cat scan's worth of detail. The second movement and finales are as good as they've ever been done - full of warmth, passion, and, yes, detail. Like Monteux only moreso, Jansons's musicmaking is surrounded by this indefinable spiritual gravity that mesmerizes, note by note it pulls you ever further in until you and the music feel as one. Perhaps the result is a little bit more heart on sleeve and deliberately tragic than Dvorak meant, but so much heart is articulated here with so much intelligence. Objectively: B+ For me: A
Harnoncourt/Royal Concertgebouw: This reading has things so far beyond any other. Look at the score and listen to how many dynamics Harnoncourt honors - perhaps a far easier proposition when you look at how slowly Harnoncourt crawls through the opening, and yet the effects Harnoncourt draws, even within the markings' parameters, are so specific and subjective that there is always material of great interest. The distant horn calls, pesante landler rhythms, near-klezmerish clarinets, are almost Mahlerian. Harnoncourt, ever himself, clearly speaks Czech music with his own inimitably strong Austrian accent. The scherzo is clearly done with a greater legato and soft dynamics to emphasize it's closeness to a waltz rather than the Czech furiant dance, and yet Harnoncourt does not have the conducting technique to pull off his non-traditional reading. No matter what his changes, he's still far more authentic to Dvorak than the more internationalist style of, say, Dohnanyi. What follows is one of the truly great second movements, notation respectful while playing with free rubato that is never obtrusive and some of the most songful, expressive playing you'll ever hear in this work. The problem is the vitiated finale. Being weird is forgivable, being boring is unforgivable, and that movement is just awful. It's tragic because there is so much right and unique in this performance. No one should be ungrateful to have heard it, but you don't get Harnoncourt's strengths without his weaknesses. He is a 'musical event', a fact of music history that will never sound like anything but himself. Here, Harnoncourt is nearly as much a hinderance as a help, but it is still an absolute necessity performance for listeners who love this work to hear. B-
Myung Whun-Chung/Vienna Philharmonic
Ivan Fischer/Budapest Festival: Here's more Brahmsian Dvorak that's better than I give it credit for being, and Fischer is another conductor for whom I'm 'in the tank.'
Mackerras/Philharmonia: Sir Charles will always have a chamber of my heart, but my estimation of him has gone ever so slightly down. The pandemic aged this listener. Snap and swing don't have quite the appeal they used to, and Sir Charles's deliberately lean palette can occasionally be as short of expression as it is long on excitement. Mackerras will always be a first class Dvorak conductor, Dvorak's truest musical grandson among maestros. Particularly in the Scherzo, there are things beyond just about everybody else (that flute ornament!). Mackerras understands what it means to 'be' Czech music beyond even what most Czechs do, and clearly, Mackerras has studied with Talich - either him or his recording, because there's nor a single effect on his recording Talich didn't do first, but in (relatively) much better sound. One problem is that the Philharmonia strings sound surprisingly small and scrappy, but the bigger problem is that Mackerras is clearly going for a very 'Czech', 'folky' Dvorak 7, full of Mackerras's eternally vibrant rhythms and 'fun'. There is no mistaking the irony of such peppy rhythms housing such grim content, but at the same time, the Philharmonia doesn't particularly understand what he's doing - they're just playing another job and Mackerras does not refine them to reflect his conception the way Monteux or Dorati would. B
John Eliot Gardiner/Royal Stockholm Philharmonic: A great maestro of the orchestra this choral master has never been, but Gardiner has learned a lot about how to conduct an orchestra since his 'sowing machine' days of the 1990s. The military precision will never leave him, but now he gives orchestras the space to breathe the phrases and harmonies, and he was always more meticulous about composer's markings than 90-95%. Dvorak 7 speaks naturally to both Gardiner's natural vitality and his explosive personality. Gardiner knows how to rage and dance both, and this choral conductor has finally learned how to make the orchestra sing, phrase, and bend the phrase. Talich and Monteux give us still more cantabile, but this is a performance that does just about everything it should. A-
Jiri Behlolavek/Czech Philharmonic
