Dvorák: The Wild Dove - Brahms: Symphony No. 1

Philzuid and conductor Duncan Ward pair Brahms and Dvořák in a programme built on a friendship that began in 1875. Brahms, on the jury for an Austrian State Scholarship, discovered the younger Czech composer and became his mentor, introducing him to his publisher Simrock. Their relationship grew into real equality. The programme opens with Dvořák’s symphonic poem The Wild Dove (Holoubek), Op. 110, one of four works from 1896 inspired by ballads in Karel Jaromír Erben’s Kytice. As the liner notes put it, its title suggests a romantic idyll, but it is actually about guilt, doubt and betrayal. A young woman poisons her husband, marries again, and is driven to despair by a wood pigeon nesting in a tree that grows from his grave. Almost all of its themes derive from the opening funeral march, and the pigeon’s scene, with flute, harp and oboe, is a striking early example of musical realism.

Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68, which he worked on for over twenty years under the weight of Schumann’s prophecy that he would continue where Beethoven left off, follows. It was premiered in Karlsruhe in 1876 and is unmistakably touched by Beethoven, especially in its finale, where a clear quotation of the Ninth Symphony’s “Ode to Joy” theme became a rebuke to the supporters of Liszt and Wagner’s “New German School.” Brahms answered critics who dubbed it “Beethoven’s Tenth” with “even a donkey can see that.” Both works were recorded live across venues in the Netherlands, bringing out a shared respect for tradition and folk expression.

Philzuid
Duncan Ward, conductor