Dvorák’s Waltzes and Mazurkas prove to be a successfully contrived balancing act between stylised composition and musical immediacy. The music critic Louis Ehlert once wrote of Dvorák’s Slavonic Dances that they made a real musician’s heart laugh within him; the comment might equally well be applied to these pieces.These “Waltzes and Mazurkas” rank alongside the works of Chopin in terms of artistic merit, yet they are not widely known and have not hitherto been heard as often in concert halls as...

• 8 Walzer, op. 54
• 6 Mazurken, op. 56