Antonín Dvorak (1841 - 1903)

Piano Concerto in G Minor, Op. 33
The Water Goblin (Vodnik), Op. 107

Antonín Dvorak must be considered the greatest of the Czech nationalist composers of the later nineteenth century, and he continues to enjoy the widest international popularity. His achievement was to bring together music that derived its inspiration from Bohemia's woods and fields with the classical traditions continued by Brahms in Vienna, at the same time establishing a distinctively Czech musical idiom and suggesting the future development of music stemming from what had long been a rich source of musical inspiration within the Habsburg Empire.

Dvorak was born in 1841 in a village of Bohemia, where his father combined the trades of inn-keeper and butcher, which it was expected that his son would later follow. As a child he played in his father's village band, his early training as a violinist in the hands of the village schoolmaster. Schoo