Fantastic movement, keeps you on the edge of your seat. :)

Follow along with some of the musical highlights.

1. Dvorak, Beethoven, and the Scherzo. Dvorak purposely confuses the listener’s expectations. 00:01:54

2. Using a little fanfare, Dvorak further builds up expectation before revealing the main theme. 00:00:21

3. When the theme is revealed, we find that it is not exactly a tune. 00:00:36

4. Two little bursts of rhythm provide the seeds from which much of the movement grows. 00:00:24

5. It is the second half of the theme that dominates. 00:00:22

6. Back to the beginning to hear the whole of this opening section 00:00:48

7. Without ever being remotely ‘academic’ or ‘intellectual’, there is much counterpoint going on here. 00:00:20

8. Dvorak’s very Czech love of combining conflicting rhythms, sometimes metres 00:02:31

9. A clearly transitional passage, obsessed with the rhythmic tag that both opens and closes the theme 00:00:30

10. Sooner than we may have expected, we seem to have arrived at the Trio section. 00:01:07

11. A new kind of tone quality sheds a subtly different light on the theme. 00:00:35

12. The flutes and oboes now chime in with an answering variant of the opening… 00:00:21

13. … and the cellos and bassoons take up the original version of the theme. 00:00:43

14. A false alarm: it was not the traditional Trio section at all, but rather part 2 of Scherzo proper 00:00:52

15. Soon, after a very rapid build, the Scherzo proper does reach its final phase. 00:01:13

16. The orchestral texture thins dramatically, and we approach what this time really is the Trio section. 00:01:28

17. The Trio section is reminiscent more of the ‘Old World’ than the ‘New’. 00:00:50

18. In the second half of the Trio, a new tune emerges, a kind of Slavonic waltz. 00:01:00

19. The main theme of the Trio returns against a much fuller orchestral background. 00:00:36

20. Then it is all a matter of repeats, until we reach the coda, which ends with an explosive bang. 00:01:15

21. Third movement (complete) 00:08:07