Luogo e data di registrazione		Sächsische Staatsoper, Dresden (Germania) - aprile 2000
	Registrazione: live / studio		live recording
	Executive Producer		Ewald Markl
	Recording Producer		Sid McLauchlan
	Tonmeister (Balance Engineer)		Klaus Hiemann
	Recording Engineers		Jürgen Bulgrin, Hans-Ulrich Bastin
	Editing		Oliver Rogalla
	Prima Edizione LP		-
	Prima Edizione CD		Deutsche Grammophon | 471 033-2 | 2 CDs - 54' 27" - 33' 07" | (p) 2001 | DDD
	Note		-

The year 1875 was something of an annus mirabilis for Dvořák: in just twelve months he composed his Fifth Symphony, the E major String Serenade, three important chamber works, four Moravian Duets and the five-act grand opera Vanda. It also marked both a peak in his fortunes - for the first time he received a state prize to help struggling young artists - and a year of deep personal sadness for the composer and his wife Anna, with the death on 19 September of their infant daughter Josefa. The effect of this event on Dvořák may be sensed in the expressive G minor Piano Trio he wrote in January 1876, and shortly afterwards he may have decided to commemorate his loss with this setting of the Stabat Mater, his longest and most profound non-operatic work to date. He sketched it between 19 February and 7 May 1876, but left the orchestration until autumn of the following year, the interruption perhaps caused by continuing, devastating family tragedies: the death of another daughter, Růžena, followed a few weeks later by the loss of the Dvořák’s sole surviving child, their son 0takar. The orchestration was eventually completed on 13 November 1877, and the premiere took place at an anniversary concert of the Prague association of musical artists (Umĕlecká beseda) on 23 December 1880, a curiously unseasonable date for such a quintessentially Passiontide composition. The first performers of the Stabat Mater were an imposing group: the soloists - Eleanora Ehrenbergová, Betty Fibichová, Antonín Vávra and Karel Čech - were the most distinguished singers of the Prague Provisional Theatre; the orchestra and choir were also provided by the theatre’s personnel; and the conductor was Dvořák's friend Adolf Čech. Even so, it is unlikely that the forces were large; the choir probably comprised some 40 singers and the orchestra only about 30 players. A second performance took place in Brno on 2 April 1882, conducted by Dvořák’s good friend Leoš Janáček; but the work’s highly successful London premiere on 10 March 1883 in the Royal Albert Hall, with considerably larger performing forces, was of far greater significance for Dvořák’s burgeoning fame outside his native land. This event did much to establish his reputation among the oratorio-loving English public and led to an invitation to conduct another performance in London the following year. These early contacts with concert-giving bodies in England resulted in a number of important choral commissions, including the Requiem Mass for the 1891 Birmingham Festival. Dvořák’s setting of the Stabat Mater a medieval liturgical text that serves both as a sequence for the Feast of the Seven Dolours and as an Office hymn for Good Friday, is the longest by any major composer. The score appears to owe nothing to a specific model - such settings were not common in 19th-century Prague (although a Stabat Mater was composed later by Dvořák’s friend and younger contemporary Josef Bohuslav Foerster [1859-1951]) - yet it reveals much about the composer and his influences. His highly developed symphonic instinct informs its larger structures - in fact, the first movement is the longest span in a work other than opera that he had yet attempted. There is also much in the outer movements and the “Eja mater” to remind us of Dvořák's extensive exposure to Italian opera as an orchestral viola player (he retained an admiration for Verdi until the end of his days). And underpinning the work’s lyricism and craftsmanship is Dvořák`s solid grounding in Baroque compositional stylistic procedures. An affective Baroque figure provides the basis for the opening movement (“Stabat Mater dolorosa”). From the very beginning there is a sense of epic tragedy in the unfolding of the musical ideas: the rising notes at the start seem, as Šourek pointed out in his seminal study of Dvořák’s life and music, to evoke a picture of the Virgin looking up at her dying son on the cross. ln the ebb and flow of this superbly sustained movement the music frequently rises towards climaxes, but on each occasion a savage diminished chord snuffs out the aspiration towards resolution. The second movement, for solo quartet, contrasts the question “Who would not weep to see the mother of Christ", in sombre E minor, with an affecting major-key setting of the text dealing with Christ’s suffering on the cross. A single verse of the hymn, “Eja Mater", sustains a broad and dramatic movement whose march-like outer sections are relieved by its exquisitely lyrical secondary material. The fourth movement, "Fac, ut ardeat cor meum", is a powerful declamatory aria for bass with gentle, almost ethereal choral interludes. Dvořák's treatment of the single verse “Tui nati vulnerati" in the fifth movement has a distinctly Baroque feel, with its flowing, almost Bach-like counterpoint. A suggestion of Baroque practices is also evident in the sixth movement, “Fac me vere", a chorale-like hymn for the tenor and male chorus, though this time the resemblance is less to Bach’s style than to the manner of Dvořák’s 18th-century Czech predecessors. In the following exquisite rendering of the words "Virgo virginum praeclara", the orchestral accompaniment is light and frequently disappears altogether; shortly before the end Dvořák adds some contrasting, highly chromatic material. This choral movement is succeeded by a marvellously understated duet for soprano and tenor, "Fac, ut portem Christi mortem". "Inflammatus et accensus", a splendid aria for solo alto, also looks back to the Baroque with its memorable ritornello opening, complete with "walking bass". Determined and lyrical by turns, this number remained a firm favourite with audiences throughout Dvořák’s lifetime. In the final movement the work returns full circle to the opening. But as the tension builds to a climax, instead of the crushing diminished chord deployed so devastatingly before, the music resolves onto a radiant D major at the words "Paradisi gloria". A flowing contrapuntal “Amen” provides an impressive peroration for soloists and chorus, the high point of which is a supremely stirring, chorale-like setting of the hymn's final words. This generates a grand final cadence, but the conclusion of the mighty whole is as hushed as its beginning. Jan Smaczny