DVORAK. Symphony No. 5 in F major, Op. 76. My Home, Overture, Op. 62. London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Istvan Kertesz. Decca Q LXT6273 0 SXL6273 (12 in., 32s. 3d. plus 5s. 9d. PT).

Czech PO, Sejna (4/58) (1/65) (R) Q SIJA10153

The expression of joy so intense it brings tears—that is the quality in Dvoi-6.k which to my mind puts him among the supreme masters of the nineteenth century. It is a quality far rarer than brooding melancholy, but at least as valuable when expressed as intensely as here. The quality is present even in the later minor-key symphonies, No. 7 in D minor and the New World in E minor, but it is this symphony in F major and the D major, No. 6, which for me represent the very heart of Dvaak's achievement. These are works which, almost more than any I know, have the power to intoxicate, to make one share if only for a moment in the happy emotions of a saint.

In a neurotic world it is amazing we do not hear this music far more. Live performances of this F major work are few and far between, though the BBC programmeplanners have promoted a fair number of broadcast performances, if only with the regional orchestras. Grateful as one is for that, this is a work which quite as much as the later Dvoilk symphonies benefits from a virtuoso performance, and that, in the fullness of joy, is what we have here.

With a genius like Dvoi-al it did not matter at all that he modelled some of his ideas on other music: his own personality was more than strong enough to submerge the derivation and make it personal to him, just as Vaughan Williams's conscious habit of 'cribbing' always produced intensely characteristic music. Where in the D major Symphony the derivations are mainly from Brahras's D major Symphony, here it is Wagner who seems to have given the occasional spur. The F major Symphony was written in 1875, a year before Siegfried and GOttercliimmerung were given at Bayreuth, but I can only assume that the Czech master had managed somehow to study the score (of the "Journey to the Rhine" at least) when the second part of the first subject has such clear echoes of that orchestral interlude, and the recapitulation of the opening theme with its arpeggio figure transferred to the horn brings another echo of Siegfried's music.

The magic of that moment with the horn rising out of forest murmurs (a Bohemian forest of course) is gloriously captured in this performance with the help of the wonderful Decca recording. The Czech performance on Supraphon is a rich and vigorous one, but the orchestral sound is unatmospheric, and the new account gives for the first time on record a fully adequate idea of what this symphony is about.

I hope that this enormously welcome addition to Kertesz's Dvoi-61 cycle, now getting quite close to completion, will help to win the popularity for this work it so clearly deserves. One could argue in favour of a more deliberately affectionate treatment in the first movement (see my review of Kubelik's account of the G major Symphony following), but Kertesz's openness and directness, coupled with his sensitivity to atmosphere and contrasts of texture and dynamic, make for exhilarating results.

The fill-up, the overture My Home, was written in 1881 six years after the symphony. It is an attractive, extrovert piece with colourful, Slavonic Dance-like ideas, but as Alec Robertson points out in his "Master Musician" book on the composer, it is not varied enough rhythmically. A valuable make-weight all the same, particularly when under Kertesz the LSO's performance goes a long way towards concealing formal weaknesses. E.G.