Dvorak: Piano Concerto in G Minor / Schubert: Wanderer Fantasy, D.760 (Great Recordings of the Century)

Antonin Dvorak is regarded as the greatest composer of the nationalist movement in what was to become Czechoslovakia. Throughout his childhood, Dvorak displayed an interest only in music. He left home at the age of 16 to study composition at the Prague Organ School. Although Dvorak is best known for his orchestral and chamber music, from the late show more 1860s he was constantly engaged in an operatic project. Richard Wagner's musical style highly influenced Dvorak's operas. Hymnus for Mixed Chorus and Orchestra (1873) attracted wide attention and marks the beginning of Dvorak's international fame and influence. In 1875 he was awarded the Austrian State Prize for Symphony in E Flat. In 1884 he was invited to conduct his Stabat Mater in London. He accepted an invitation to head the National Conservatory in New York in 1892. In America, Dvorak wrote his celebrated work, his symphony From the New World (1893). His peripatetic career (he traveled extensively) and the honors bestowed on him by numerous nations are paralleled in his compositions by their cosmopolitan use of national and folk melodies and the free-flowing new melodies he composed. Dvorak later returned to Prague and was appointed director of the Prague Conservatory. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

Franz Schubert was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of a schoolmaster who was also an amateur cellist. As a boy, he learned to play the piano, violin, and organ and sang in the church choir. Schubert had an uncommon talent for melody and soon began to compose his own music. By the age of 17, he had written his first symphony and many songs, show more including his first song masterpiece "Gretchen am Spinnrade" (1814). In 1814 Schubert began to teach, but he hated teaching and gave up his position in 1818. From this point on, he lived fairly precariously, earning a living primarily by giving private music lessons. At the same time, he composed furiously and constantly, sometimes writing as many as eight songs in a day. Although he sold many of his songs and piano pieces, he was always short of money and often relied on the generosity of his friends. His health began to decline after 1822 as a result of syphilis. Schubert's brief and difficult life is not reflected at all in his astounding outpouring of lieder cycles, symphonies, and chamber and church music. His work shows that he was a poet in music, conveying a wide range of emotions and meanings through his songs and other pieces. Among his best-known and most important works are the song cycles Die schone Mullerin (1823) and Die Winterreise (1826), and his Unfinished Symphony (Symphony No. 8) (1822). (Bowker Author Biography) show less