Symphony No. 2 (Dvořák)

Symphony No. 2 in B flat major Op. 4 (1865). It consists of four movements:

• Allegro with motorcycle.
• Little adagio
• Scherzo: Allegro with brio
• Finale: Allegro with fuoco

Dvořák composed this second symphony in the same year as the first, when he was twenty-four years old. However, in his appreciation they were two very different works: although he did not initially place too much value on any of his first four symphonies, especially the first, and even made some attempt to destroy them, eventually the second became one of his favorites.. This was probably due to the fact that it was composed at a time when he was deeply in love with Josefa Čermáková, who would later become his sister-in-law, since he ended up marrying his sister Anna his. About the score of this work circulates the anecdote that Dvořák could not bind it due to lack of money; His friend Moric Anger agreed to do it, but knowing that he was in danger of being destroyed if he returned it to its author, with the excuse that he could not complete the necessary funds, he retained it in his possession. In order for the Berlin publisher Simrok to accept it, the composer made a first revision in 1887, and a second one a year later to premiere it in Prague. However, it was not published until after his death.

In the first movement some passages from Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 "Pastoral" can be distantly recognizable, while the second movement is written in the manner of Schumann or Mendelssohn in a more German style.