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Dvořák

Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) was a Czech composer whose career was transformed when Brahms, serving on an Austrian state stipend committee, encountered his music and recommended him to his own publisher Simrock. In 1892 he was recruited to direct the National Conservatory in New York at a salary that dwarfed anything available in Europe; the New World Symphony and the American String Quartet were both written during his American years. Away from music he was a passionate railway enthusiast who visited Prague station regularly to watch locomotives and memorise their numbers, and kept pigeons with equal dedication. His string writing, from the Serenade for Strings to the late quartets, is among the most naturally idiomatic in the repertoire.

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