Antonin Dvorak had emerged as a major composer throughout Europe long before he celebrated his 50th birthday in 1891. But there remained one country for him to conquer - the United States, which, during the closing decades of the 19th-century had become a major economic power and was the natural refuge for immigrants from all over the world. Stories of vast fortunes made within a comparatively few years were by no means uncommon in the burgeoning USA, and many of the creators of this wealth were determined to put money back into the community, especially the Arts - always the touchstone of a civilised society.

Andrew Carnegie, the Rothschilds, the Vanderbilts and Augustus Juilliard are but names chosen at random from many of those immigrant American philanthropists, to which should be added that of a lesser-known figure, Mrs Jeannette Thurber. She was the wife of a wealthy New York businessman, and by 1890 she had founded the National Conservatory of Music in New York. Mrs Thurber wanted to appoint a distinguished international musician as the Conservatory's Director, and although several European musicians had declined her approaches, eventually she secured Dvorak's services by making him an offer he could hardly refuse.

At the time, Dvorak was living happily with his family in Prague, yet he recognised the undoubted benefits which Mrs Thurber's proposals would bring him. And so, in September1892, he arrived in New York City with his family, where they remained for the next three years. Much was pleasant and attractive to him in New York (he was keen on railways, and would spend hours at the Grand Central and Pennsylvania Stations, watching the comings and goings of the trains), but Dvorak's relations with Mrs Thurber were not always smooth, and he became homesick. There were compensations. His contract with the Conservatory enabled him to take four months break each year for composition, which he used to the full. During Dvorak's 'American' period, as it came to be known, he wrote several masterpieces: the Sixth String Quartet (now called the 'American'), the String Quintet in E flat, the Cello Concerto in B minor as well as his Ninth and most famous Symphony, in E minor, which he himself subtitled 'From the New World'.

Dvorak's Cello Concerto has three movements. This is one of Dvorak's last works. It is a deeply introspective concerto, composed with great insight into the unique character of the cello, one of the most difficult concerto instruments of them all.

Though brief, Dvorak's stay in the United States had a profound effect on musical America. Ever the musical Nationalist, Dvorak in a controversial statement advised American composers to find their inspiration in Indian, Negro, and other Folk sources. Although several of his most honoured works were created while he resided in the United States,- among them the "American" String Quartet and the Symphony "From the New World", in addition to the Cello Concerto- even these pieces pulsate with the national feeling and climate of his native Bohemia.

A prime motivator for Dvorak's Cello Concerto was Victor Herbert- the same Victor Herbert who later won renown as the composer of some of the best-loved Operettas of the early 20th Century. In the early 1890's, Herbert was a cellist in the orchestra of New York's Metropolitan Opera, and in 1894 he appeared as soloist with the New York Philharmonic in the premiere of his own Second Cello Concerto. Dvorak attended that performance and was deeply impressed with the musical potential afforded by the combination of solo Cello and Orchestra. Thus having been sparked, Dvorak proceeded to produce the work that has become the cornerstone of the repertory for Cello and Orchestra. And it goes almost without saying that the Concerto has an unmistakable Slavic Folk quality. In many of its pages there is a genuine nostalgia that can only be attributed to Dvorak's homesickness for the Bohemian countryside he loved so deeply. Indeed, he spent his American summers in the town of Spillville, Iowa, where there was a fairly large community of immigrants from Bohemia.  

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