opportunity for a bravura display. The movement is largely a personal conversation between the violin and the higher wind instruments. It closes with a return to the calm opening, now on French horn, with the soloist soaring ever higher above. In the finale, Dvořák’s Bohemian roots appear more distinctly - it is close in style to his popular Slavonic Dances, being based on the Furiant, a faststepping Bohemian folk-dance. The soloist introduces a lively theme that recurs as a rondo throughout the movement, each time with a different instrumental texture and separated by contrasting episodes. After the violin introduces and develops a second waltz-like theme that ends each of its phrases with an imitation of the three foot-stamps of Slavonic folk-dancers, the first theme returns in a delightful scoring that is reminiscent of Czech bagpipes. Now the rhythm shifts and slows down and Dvořák injects a melancholy Dumka melody into the rondo structure. The first and second themes return, then the Dumka again, now triumphant in the major key, and the solo violin drives furiously on to a brilliant conclusion. Tsilli Rudik
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