No nation is prouder of its musical heritage than the Czech Republic, as any evening at a concert in Prague or Brno will attest. But beyond the grand halls and big cities, there are musical roots to explore that will take a cultural traveler to some of the most charming and intriguing places in Central Bohemia. Following in the footsteps of the composers and discovering their sources of inspiration is an experience that will delight musical aficionados and novices alike.
Internationally, Antonín Dvořák holds the most prominent position among Czech composers, with his thrilling New World Symphony a mainstay in the classical repertoire. Yet for all its worldly appeal, Dvořák’s music is also deeply emblematic of his homeland, reflecting its folklore, traditions and love of nature. Retracing Dvořák’s life and work brings all those elements to the fore in settings that encompass other, equally interesting attractions.
Nelahozeves
A good place to start is Nelahozeves, a small town about 40 kilometers north of Prague with big cultural heritage sites. The first thing a visitor stepping off the train sees is Nelahozeves Castle, towering high on a promontory above the town. Just steps away from the castle, the house where Dvořák was born and lived until the age of 12 has been restored and turned into an interactive museum that re-creates the composer’s childhood environment. Seen together, the house and castle offer neat complementary views of 19th-century life from aristocratic and common perspectives.
With the aid of an audio device, visitors can take self-guided tours of the birth house that bring to life the touchstones of Dvořák’s youth. Each room evokes an aspect of village life as the composer experienced it – church, school, seasonal celebrations, the inn attached to the house that his parents ran – and draws connections to his music. It was the church, for example, where Dvořák was inspired by composers like Mozart and Haydn, whose music was played on religious holidays. “It was being ever in the midst of this musical element,” the composer later said, “that developed the feeling within me that made me long to become a real musician.”
Still, Dvořák might have become a butcher, like his father, were it not for his first music teacher, Antonín Liehmann, who convinced his parents that their son had a future in music. Visitors can see manuscripts of polkas that Dvořák and Liehmann wrote together, and activate a piano to hear them played. Or whirl to the Slavonic Dances in a room that simulates the tavern in the inn, where a trick mirror adds period dance clothing to your reflection. For more serious appreciation of Dvořák’s oeuvre, a legacy room focuses on significant places where his music was either composed or performed, offering an opportunity to listen to pieces like his Stabat Mater (which Dvořák conducted at Royal Albert Hall in London) and the New World Symphony (composed in America and premiered at Carnegie Hall).
Throughout, fragile artifacts and poignant mementos augment videos, backlit timelines and other electronic exhibits. But the most breathtaking room in the house is the plainest one – the family room, quite small by modern standards, its most notable feature a floor-to-ceiling curtain. This is typically where women gave birth in the mid-1800s, at home, behind a curtain. It’s a head-spinning moment when you realize that you’re standing in the very spot where Dvořák was born in 1841. This is also the room where he likely first heard fairy tales like “The Noon Witch” (Polednice), which he later crafted into symphonic poems.
There is nothing small about Nelahozeves Castle, nor gloomy, as old castles often are. This one dates from the early 1600s, yet appears as bright and fresh as if it only just opened. Credit for that goes to the Lobkowicz family, a noble line with a 700-year history in Central Europe that amassed large land holdings and castles filled with stunning collections of art, furnishings, books, and music manuscripts. Confiscated and scattered during the Nazi and Communist occupations, the collections were painstakingly recovered in the years after the Velvet Revolution and are now on display in the family’s four remaining castles. (Starting in 2019, the Lobkowicz family also assumed management of Dvořák’s birth house.)
Nelahozeves Castle offers a sumptuous look at aristocratic living with elaborately furnished bedrooms, a huge dining room with place settings for 22, a well-equipped armory and hunting trophies lining the hallway walls. Many of the pieces are museum-quality – mint-condition muskets, tables and desks of inlaid wood, dazzling paintings by masters like Brueghel, Veronese and Panini. In particular, a painting of the Greek goddess Hygieia by Peter Paul Rubens that portrays her feeding a sacred snake is absolutely mesmerizing.
Amid the opulence, small curiosities abound: A clock lit by candles for night viewing. A sacred painting with actual relics of saints attached to it. On a wall filled with antlers and deer heads, drawings of improbable animals: a rabbit with tusks instead of teeth, another rabbit-like creature with two bodies sharing one head. At this juncture, there is no way to tell if they are real or fanciful creations.
Parents looking for a respite will find a shady playground with its own mini-castle between the museum and the castle, a perfect spot to turn the children loose or sit at a picnic table and enjoy some ice cream. Close by, Bistro Skála caters to bicyclists, and Restaurace Vinopalna serves generous sit-down meals. There is also a cozy café at the railroad station.
Příbram
The other bookend to Dvořák’s life lies 100 kilometers southwest, near Příbram. The city harbors two significant historical sites that are well worth a stop on the way to see Dvořák’s rural retreat.
The ground beneath Příbram is honeycombed with mining tunnels that date to the early 1500s. Emperor Rudolf II declared the city a royal mining town in 1579, and by the mid-19th century Příbram was supplying almost all the silver and lead for the entire Austro-Hungarian empire. Extracting precious minerals was hard and dangerous work – miners only lived to an average age of 35. Today there are multiple (and much safer) tours at several mine sites that offer a drop to 1,000 meters below ground. On the surface, the country’s largest open-air museum features an outsized assortment of mining equipment and infrastructure.
If life was hell underground, the highest point of the city offers a glimpse of heaven. Svatá Hora (Holy Mountain) has been a major pilgrimage site since 1632, when legend holds that a blind beggar miraculously had his sight restored by the Virgin Mary. A statuette of the Madonna holding the child Jesus became the main object of worship in what is now a magnificent basilica. One need not be religious to appreciate the spectacular Baroque architecture, silver statuary in the main chapel and priceless artifacts in a small museum. The site’s fabled history can be found on the ceilings surrounding the chapel, where murals depict 100 miracles attributed to the Holy Virgin of Svatá Hora.
Vysoká is a rural village just south of Příbram that caught Dvořák’s fancy when he attended the wedding of his wife’s sister, the actress Josefina Čermáková, and Count Václav Robert Kounic in 1877. Regular visits there turned into a permanent summer residency starting in 1885, after Dvořák purchased a plot of land on Kounic’s wooded estate and converted several small buildings into a home for his family. The modest main residence included a small study with a piano where he did his composing. Major works such as his Symphony no. 8 and much of Rusalka were written there, though the composer is said to have spent just as much time tending his large garden and feeding his beloved pigeons.
Dvořák’s summer home is not available for public viewing, but Kounic’s handsome manor house now anchors a serene memorial to the composer. Furnished with period furniture, the house offers brief overviews of Dvořák’s life and work, assorted memorabilia, a room to listen to his music and historic photos on the walls, including an 1894 extended family portrait taken on the front steps in which the composer is almost lost amid the crowd of relatives. But the chief attraction is the surrounding countryside, where Dvořák spent hours walking, finding inspiration in the birdsong and a pond that is said to have inspired Rusalka. Visitors expecting a full-blown set from the opera may be disappointed to find no more than a diminutive pool now. But the birds seem to sing with extraordinary color and energy even on rainy days, and a statue of a nymph at a small pond near the house evokes the myth and magic of the setting.
Dvořák spent his final summer in Vysoká in 1903. In the spring of 1904 he fell ill, and died in Prague on 1 May. He left a legacy of 30 works composed in whole or part at Vysoká, along with a group of friends and supporters that included local miners and farmers with whom he enjoyed socializing at a pub not far from his house.
There is nothing quite like hearing music at its source, and with that in mind the Antonín Dvořák Music Festival, a regional event held in the spring every year, brings together an array of native and foreign musicians (this year including the Dresden Philharmonic) to perform programs in historic churches, chateaus and open-air venues in and around Příbram. In Nelahozeves, a one-day event in the fall (this year on 6th September) offers concerts and supplemental activities for children. Dvořák may be gone, but his spirit and music live on.
Web links:
Nelahozeves Dvořák Birth House
Open Tues–Sun, 9am to 5pm. Admission by timed tickets.
Nelahozeves Castle
Open Tues–Sun, 9am to 5pm. Admission by timed tickets.
Příbram Mining Museum
Open Tue–Fri, 9am to 4pm, open on Sat–Sun from May to October, with opening times until 6pm. Admission by timed tickets, see additional information.
Svatá Hora (Holy Mountain)
Open Mon–Sat, 6.30am to 6pm, Sunday 7am to 5pm. Regular Mass services are held throughout the week.
Dvořák Memorial, Vysoká
Museum open Tues–Sun, 10am to 3pm, later afternoon opening in April to October. Park open every day from 8.30am until dusk. General admission 30–70 CZK.
Antonín Dvořák Music Festival
Held from April to early June in Příbram.
Nelahozeves Festival
Held in September in Nelahozeves.
See more at visitcentralbohemia.com
This article was sponsored by the Central Bohemia Tourist Board
