Composers Datebook™ is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present, with appropriate and accessible music related to each.
Dvořák's "Toy Story?"
On today's date in 1893, Anton Seidl conducted the New York Philharmonic in the first performance of Antonin Dvořák's Symphony No. 9, a work subtitled "From the New World." This was an afternoon concert, meant as a public dress rehearsal for the work's "official" premiere the following evening. Among the Dec. 15th audience was Dvořák's eight-year old son, Otakar, who had a special interest in the success of his father's new symphony. In the preceding weeks, Otakar had accompanied his father to a New York café, where Dvořák met Anton Seidl to go over the new score. Young Otakar amused himself at a nearby toyshop, where a seven-foot long model of the ocean liner Majestic was on display, complete with its own miniature steam-chamber and working propellers. It cost a whopping $45—a HUGE amount of money in those days, and the answer from papa was always: NO! Seeing that the boy's heart was set on having the toy, Anton Seidl suggested to Otakar that he wait until after the premiere and then ask his father again. Seidl told Otakar that if all went well at the premiere, Dvořák would be in a generous mood. The premiere was a great success, and, as Otakar recalled: "When Seidl offered to pay half the cost of the Majestic, Father could not say no. So that is how the three of us celebrated the success of the first performance of the New World Symphony."