This year marks the 50th anniversary of José Serebrier's U.S. conducting debut. He's celebrating in a big way, with a new release of all of Dvorak's Symphonies for Warner Classics. Kate Remington talked with Maestro Serebrier about the moment he knew music would be his life, and how Dvorak matured as a composer.
Interview excerpts:
When did you realize that music was going to be your life?
"Oh, it's a very corny and romantic story! When I was nine years old, there wasn't even a radio in my home. I had no exposure to music of any sort, but I was madly in love with a little nine-year-old girl, and she only had eyes for a nine-year-old violinist. So I told my parents that I wanted to learn the violin, and I bought this violin, and I used to walk in front of her house with the violin case to show her, and she was puzzled! So that's the corny and romantic reason why, as a nine-year-old, I decided to study music. But then music took over my life, and two years later I decided I really wanted to be a conductor, and I formed my own orchestra!"
Now that you've come to know all of Dvorak's symphonies, composed throughout his lifetime, how would you say he matured as a composer?
"The opposite way of Beethoven, who became more complicated and intricate as he progressed. The last quartets of Beethoven are modernistic, are amazingly complicated! Dvorak took the opposite path. He became much more public-oriented, and in all his music he used simpler methods, shorter works- he filtered his music. The early works are full of counterpoint; he used every trick he learned in composition class, and you have four, five different elements playing at once, one against the other. As you get towards the eighth and ninth Symphonies, you only hear one melodic line, the rest is accompaniment. He made it easier for the public to follow the music. So the progress of Dvorak is quite amazing."
