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Of course, numerous other aspects of detail differ between the two sources. 6 Dvorˇák’s first thought for the cello’s figuration was lacking in the upbeat character which ensures a sense of movement (see Ex. 4a). A simple shift of the semiquaver group on to the weak beat provides the necessary impetus (see Ex. 4b). ) was extensively prefigured in the sketch, though, as was often the case, Dvorˇák left out many of the accidentals and provided himself with the key written out (A-flat minor; As moll) as a mnemonic.

But another factor was almost certainly in play. When Jeannette Thurber opened her National Conservatory of Music in the autumn of 1885, with backing from her husband’s wholesale food company and donations from a number of rich philanthropists, including Andrew Carnegie and William K. Vanderbilt, her aim was to provide a systematic training for musicians of talent along the lines of the Paris Conservatoire, where she had studied as a teenager. 4 Close to her heart was the desire to attract a figure of international standing to lead her organisation, a feat she achieved in the same year as the Bill of Incorporation: ‘In the year 1891 I was so fortunate as to secure Bohemia’s foremost composer, Antonín Dvorˇák, as artistic director of the National Conservatory’.

In both, the solo cello enters at bar 9, although in the sketch it lacks the upbeat of the final version; here also Dvorˇák confirms the implied modulation to B minor in bar 7 which he cancelled in the final version with a graceful side-slip back to G major. ) is also present in the sketch, written in a neater, more decisive hand and with far fewer corrections than in the opening bars. As in his sketch of the first movement, Dvorˇák restarted that of the slow movement. While aspects of the phrasing come closer to the final version, Dvorˇák’s recasting of the opening theme takes it much further from the original sketch for which, with one or two alterations, he ultimately opted.