The Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra enjoyed a long and intensive artistic collaboration, which was brought to an abrupt end by his death in October 2021. BR-KLASSIK is now presenting outstanding live recordings of concerts from the past years that have not yet been released. This recording of Dvořák's Seventh Symphony documents a concert from March 1981 in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz. The "Scherzo capriccioso" was also recorded under studio conditions during this concert. After a successful first visit in 1884, the London Philharmonic Society asked Antonín Dvořák to return to London the following year and compose a new symphony for the occasion. An honorable commission - after all, the London Philharmonic Society had commissioned Beethoven's Ninth Symphony six decades earlier! When Dvořák put the first sketches on paper on December 13, 1884, he was well aware of the high expectations - including his own. And most music critics and Dvořák biographers have actually struggled with the interpretation of this exceptional piece. The work was also interpreted "politically" against the backdrop of increasing German-Czech tensions in those years. In view of the existential force of the D minor Symphony, its anger, its expansive pessimism, its confessional character, it could be assumed that it was determined by the biography and personality of its composer Composer's biography and personality, which were most likely much more complex, sorrowful and "problematic" than would fit in with a "Bohemian idyll". In any case, even in Dvořák's eighth symphony, which is considered more cheerful, and in the last "From the New World", a more or less latent tendency towards tragic yearning has not been lost. The world premiere of the seventh symphony took place in London on April 22, 1885, conducted by the composer. It became one of Dvořák's greatest successes. Dvořák's Scherzo capriccioso from 1883 is more than just a filler piece on the CD. The fact that it is more dramatic and passionate than its playful title suggests is probably due to the fact that it was written at a time of crisis in the composer's life. It is an elaborate composition of convincing craftsmanship, artfully designed both formally and thematically, with great musical ingenuity and dance-like impetus.