To Hear The Music

Dozens of fine performances of Dvořák’s chief American works—the Cello Concerto, New World Symphony, and American Quartet—are available on CD and tape. Mstislav Rostropovich alone has recorded the concerto seven times, including a widely admired reading with the Berlin Philharmonic under Karajan on Deutsche Grammophon. The London label offers a first-rate New World Symphony by the Vienna Philharmonic under Kiril Kondrashin with the American Suite—Dvořák’s orchestral version of the Suite for Piano he wrote in New York—filling out the disk. Also on London: the American Quartet and the E-flat Quintet on one disk, played by the Janáček Quartet and members of the Vienna Octet, respectively.