Symphony No.5 in F major, Op.76

Dvorak’s Fifth Symphony was written at a particularly happy time in his life. He had become the father of his first child, Otokar, just over a year earlier; he had rescued his opera The King and The Charcoal Burner from failure and had seen it performed at the Provisional Theatre in Prague; and he had heard that he had won the Austrian State Stipendium for “young, poor, and talented artists.” The radiant opening of the Fifth Symphony, with its gentle F major fanfares on woodwind over quietly rustling strings, is surely a true reflection of his state of mind at the time.

That radiance survives to the end of the work as a kind of background to it. It disappears from time to time, sometimes for quite long periods, but it is never far below the surface and it shows through in one way or another on several occasions before the brilliant restoration of the F major fanfares at the end. It is most prominent of all in the first movement, where it shares the foreground with two other main themes - a vigorously grandioso Bohemian dance tune for the whole orchestra and a more lyrical violin melody with appealing chromatic inflections and rhythmic syncopations. The one serious hint of unease in the exposition is expressed by a kind of anti-fanfare introduced in E minor by strings and woodwind and repeated by trombones. Its sinister influence is exorcised in the development section, however, through confrontation with wholesome material derived from the opening fanfare theme, and is never heard again.

The slow movement seems at first to have little to do with the opening Allegro. It could, indeed, be taken as an independent, characteristically Slavonic dumka construction, the melancholy Andante in A minor with its lovely cello melody offset by the bright A major material in a quicker tempo. But it is in the major sections that Dvorak allows the radiant background to show throw again. It is particularly clear in the shape of the main theme of the middle section and the bright harmonies applied to it by woodwind and horns.

In another effort to preserve continuity Dvorak cuts short the pause that might have been expected between the second and third movements and recalls the Andante material to ease his way into the lively Allegro scherzando in B flat major. Although there is another brief glimpse of the background in the woodwind fanfares at the beginning of the middle section, the most captivating inspiration here is the cheerful variant that so spontaneously arises on flute and clarinet just before the return of Allegro scherzando.

The opening theme of the last movement has something of the negative quality of the anti-fanfare in the first movement. In this case, not least because the theme is so much more emphatically presented and because it takes so long before it finds its way into F major, the sinister influence is not so easily neutralised. Indeed, in spite of the lyrical appeal of the second subject, it continues well into the development section. But, at what is perhaps the most agitated moment in the whole symphony, delightfully kind words on clarinets in thirds turn away the wrath of the first subject and after that it is not possible to take it quite so seriously. Even though it renews its threats in the recapitulation, it is inevitably bound for the splendid reconciliation of the final bars, where it is converted into a trumpet fanfare and ingeniously combined with a last recall of the opening fanfare theme itself on trombones.

Gerald Larner©