A lasting and productive experience of Antonin Dvorak’s American stay was his visit in the summer of 1893 to the Bohemian colony of Spillville, Iowa.
It was there that Dvorak wrote much of his “New World” Symphony and the entirety of the quartet, begun three days after his arrival and completed in a mere two weeks.
The F-major Quartet reflects, in the words of Dvořák scholar Jaroslav Holeček, “the happy, restful moments and the magic of the beautiful countryside that the composer would walk every day of his stay there, usually beginning shortly after sunrise.”
Listen to the performance of this magical music by the Takacs String Quartet:
