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Linking the cello concertos of Antonin Dvorak (top) and Victor Herbert
In 1894, Antonin Dvorak was teaching and conducting in New York, where he heard a concerto for cello and orchestra by one of his colleagues. He was so impressed that he rushed backstage and told his friend, “Splendid, absolutely splendid!”
He might well have added what Brahms would say after hearing Dvorak’s own cello concerto a year later: “Had I known that such a concerto could be written, I would have tried to compose one myself.”
And who wrote the piece that inspired Dvorak? Victor Herbert, remembered now almost entirely for his operettas
(5 out of 5 stars) If you are going to own only one CD of Hindemith s music, I urge you to make it this one. The Mathis der Maler symphony (1934) and the Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes of Weber (1943) are probably Paul Hindemith s two greatest orchestral works. The music is appealing, vital, beautifully crafted, accessible, bristling with a masculine vigor, exuberance, energy. Blomstedt is arguably the foremost Hindemith conductor of our day; these performances are expert, heartfelt, and superbly realized, displaying these two works in all their considerable glory. The sound (the recordings were made in Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, 1987) is representative of the splendid Decca/London engineering at its best; this is an exemplary modern digital orchestral recording: well balanced, with full frequency range, wide dynamic range, every detail of the inventive orchestration clearly registering. This CD has been warmly praised by critics, receiving strong recommendation