Antonín Dvořák, Serenade for Winds and Strings in D Minor, op. 44:  Dvořák (1841-1904) was “the happiest and least neurotic of the later Romantics” [Harold Schonberg].  Although he is best known for his symphonies and his cello concerto, he displayed considerable skill in writing chamber music.  He grew up in a poor Bohemian family and did not begin his formal musical training until age 16.  After two years’ study at the Prague Conservatory, he worked as an orchestral violist and a church organist and choirmaster, all the while composing.  The big break in his career came when Johannes Brahms read some of his works and began to champion him as a composer.  Dvořák’s reputation spread, leading to tours of England, Germany, Russia and, from 1892-95, the United States, where he was struck by the lack of public support for the arts: “The great American republic alone, in its national government as well as in the various governments of the states, suffers art and music to go without encouragement.  Music must go unaided, and be content if she can get the support of a few private individuals.”  Some things never change.  Dvořák composed this Serenade in January 1878, shortly after he returned from Vienna, where he had heard a performance of Mozart’s Serenade No. 10, which we will hear after intermission.  Dvořák’s Serenade premiered in November 1878 with the composer conducting the Prague Provisional Theatre Orchestra.  Even though Mozart's Serenade No. 10 inspired Dvořák to write this one, “Dvorak’s melodies, rhythms, and harmonic vocabulary remain emphatically Czech” [Roger Dettmer].  Brahms was impressed by this Serenade, writing to the violinist Joseph Joachim, “a more lovely, refreshing impression of real, rich, and charming creative talent you can’t easily have.  I think it must be pleasure for the wind players.”   

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Serenade No. 10 in B-flat Major, K.361:  Mozart (1756-1791) learned to play the keyboard at age 3, started composing at age 5, and learned the violin at age 6 on a tour, during which he and his child-prodigy sister performed all over Europe.  He was “history’s first important professional ‘freelance’ musician” [David Dubal].  “There was literally nothing in music he could not do better than anybody else” [Harold Schonberg].  In Mozart’s time, daytime entertainment music was often called a “divertimento,” while nighttime entertainment music usually bore the label “serenade.”  Mozart probably composed this work in 1781, possibly for his own wedding celebration the following year, or possibly for a benefit concert for his clarinetist friend Anton Stadler.  Some critics consider this Serenade “Mozart’s wind-band masterpiece” [Joe Staines et al.].  “The great glory of this work is the way the various instruments move in and out of the limelight dictating the mood of its seven movements” [id.].  In the 1984 film Amadeus, the opening passage of Movement III is what prompted the elderly Antonio Salieri, in his confession to a priest, to say, “This was a music I’d never heard.  Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing.  It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God.”  Why does Mozart remain so popular?  Why was the fictionalized Amadeus such a successful stage play and later a successful movie?  The answer is from pianist and Juilliard professor David Dubal: “Today’s complex world finds Mozart a balm for sagging spirits.  For cynics who think human perfection is an impossibility, Mozart is always with us to prove otherwise.”