Jarmil Burghauser

This book by Jarmil Burghauser may be of value to classical musicians interested in details of the life and works of Dvorak, an underrated composer, even so popular as he is . It will not interest the general reader or even the lover of classical music who is not an ardent and curious fan of Dvorak.
The English edition, translated by David R. Beveridge, a Dvorak scholar, is straightforward if not remarkably engaging, likely a reflection of the original Czech.
Minor criticisms.
(1) The Time Line of Dvorak's Life shows only two entries(!): his birth and first attendance at school. Mitigating that is a list of Important Political and Cultural Events that includes many of his life events.
(2) Dvorak's publishers assigned unordered opus numbers to his works. The author, a Dvorak scholar, has assigned B-numbers to them in chronological order. While the book provides a list of works by genre that includes date of completion, most items do not provide the B-number, which would have been of use for reference, if they exist for each work.
There are some good photographs throughout and a nice foldout family tree inside the back cover.
The book inspired me to order yet one more Dvorak CD: a four-hand piano performance of his Legends and his From the Bohemian Forest. He wrote well for the piano.… (altro)