Sunday 18 December 2011

Dvorak - Symphony 3 [Jarvi-Scottish National Orchestra]

Apart from Dvorak's Ninth Symphony, i find all the rest of his Symphonies to be of lower quality, except that is for the Third, i have a real soft spot for it, and listening to it today gave me an even deeper appreciation for it, it's cast in the unusual three movement structure, and i think that this actually adds to it's beauty, the Jarvi cycle of symphonies is worth collecting.

Neeme Jarvi is now 74, born in Estonia, seems to have recorded a cycle of everything on Chandos, and he made this recording in 1987, each of the Symphonies had their own disc, with fillers in the form of Overtures, Tone Poems, and the like, and a curious woodcut artwork on each cover [by Clare Melinsky], and the colour scheme for this one is in dark pink, notice on the back cover i wrote out a tracklisting for the variations, on the disc it only appears as track five, i like to know where i am in the variations, it's actually a sticker which i wrote on, but i'm pleased with my work here, it makes the disc easier to read.

Now i really like the opening of this Symphony, Dvorak reserved one of his very best tunes for this Symphony, and it's always been a favourite movement of mine, but on this listening i so much enjoyed the middle slow movement, and learned some new things about it, 

Here's Julian Kovatchev conducting the Dvorak Third on YouTube, the slow movement starts at 11:40.