Works for string quartet and string quintet performed by Musicians from Marlboro.Dvořák: Two Waltzes, Op. 54Dvořák: String Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 97, B. 180Much of Dvořák’s music—including the piece that he’s perhaps best-known for now, the New World symphony—inhabits a sort of cultural limbo. In the case of New World, it’s a musical homage to popular and folk tunes of America, but it’s written by a Czech composer, and at times Dvořák’s own background comes through. Today’s podcast features another of Dvořák’s “American” works, the string quintet in E-flat Major, inspired by the composer’s first long vacation in the States. As the story goes, Dvořák was immediately taken with the simple, pentatonic folk songs he heard during his time in Spillville, Iowa, and this delightful string quintet does indeed sound distinctly “American” from the start, despite its foreign authorship. We’ll set the stage for this piece—which makes up the bulk of today’s program—with another example of Dvořák’s cross-cultural explorations, this one with a more distinctly Slavic accent. The two waltzes, opus 54, apply Dvořák’s sensibility to that classic Austrian form: the waltz.