This publication is a critical edition of the Tragic Overture, one of the most fascinating early symphonic works by Antonín Dvořák. The overture was written for Dvořák's first opera Alfred and completed, according to a note in the autograph score, on 19 October 1870. Alfred itself is quite mysterious; it was written to an old German libretto from 1811 by Karl Theodor Körner. At the time of the opera's composition, Dvořák worked as a violist in Prague's Czech (Provisional) Theatre, and it is not entirely clear why he wrote an opera in German; Dvořák also never mentions this work among his compositions and does not discuss it in his correspondence. The plot takes place during the invasion of England by Danish Vikings in the ninth century and presents the struggle of the English king Alfred with the Danes, as well as the drama of Alfred's bride Alvina. Taken captive by the Danes, Alvina withstands the pressure to marry Harald, the leader of the Danes (the opera's libretto with an English translation is available online at www.arcodiva.cz/site/arcodiva.cz/attachments/other/up0140.pdf). Musically, the overture is heavily influenced by early Wagner (especially the Tannhäuser overture), with principal themes from the opera (including those associated with the Danes and the British) deployed programmatically in an extensive sonata-form movement with a slow introduction and a rousing, triumphant coda.

The need for a new critical edition of the overture has to do with the performance and reception history of the work, as the Foreword by the editor of the 2016 score, Ludmila Šmídová, makes clear. Dvořák's opera was never performed during the composer's lifetime. However, in 1880 Dvořák was asked by famous Czech poet and writer Jan Neruda to provide an orchestral work for the annual concert organized by the Society of Czech Journalists, planned for May 1881, and he decided to revive the opera's overture on that occasion. Changing the title of the work to Tragic Overture (Tragická ouvertura), Dvořák shortened and revised it significantly (the revision included the excision of about one quarter of the musical material). The overture made it to a rehearsal for the 1881 concert (conducted by Adolf Čech), but it was replaced with Dvořák's Third Slavonic Rhapsody in the concert itself. The next performance of the overture occurred only after Dvořák's death, in another concert of the Society of Czech Journalists, on 4 January 1905, in Prague's Rudolfinum hall with the Czech Philharmonic conducted by Oskar Nedbal. At this point, the overture's connection to Dvořák's first opera was forgotten, and this was possibly one of the reasons why one reviewer suggested that it be renamed as ‘Dramatic Overture’ because of its triumphant conclusion. This title caught on and was used in the first edition of orchestral score, published by Simrock in 1912.

Simrock's edition contained numerous interpretive editorial elements, some of which mix up the original layers of 1870 with various later revisions, whereas others are changes introduced by the 1912 editors (one of whom may have been Dvořák's son-in-law Josef Suk, though there is no direct documentary evidence for that theory). The first critical edition of the overture appeared already in 1974, but it was based on the 1912 Simrock edition, not the autograph. Šmídová points out that the 1974 edition is quite problematic from present-day editorial and musicological perspectives, especially because it does not distinguish the various levels of revisions in the autograph score.

The 2016 edition of the Tragic Overture is based primarily on the autograph score, as Šmídová explains in the Critical Report. More specifically, the editor takes as the basis for the score the version of the overture as it existed after the 1880–81 revision and disregards the changes executed in the 1912 edition. An important set of editorial decisions also concerns the use of the oboes and the English horn. The autograph score contains numerous alterations in the wind parts which, according to Šmídová, were likely executed to make it possible for two instead of three players to perform the two oboe and one English horn parts. In the autograph, these revisions are in pencil only and seem to be written in haste, possibly during the one rehearsal in 1881. Most of these revisions were incorporated into the 1912 orchestral score and therefore also the 1974 critical edition, but Šmídová chose to use the instrumentation without the revisions.

The score is beautifully printed, and the layout is effective and easy to follow. A welcome bonus to the edition is the facsimile of five pages of the autograph score. The introductory essay also features facsimiles of the title pages of Simrock's piano reduction and orchestral score from 1912; the only problem is that the orchestral score is mistakenly referred to as the ‘piano arrangement’ (xiii and 102). In general, the volume is a welcome addition to the New Dvořák Edition and fittingly complements the critical edition of the piano-vocal score of the full opera (created by composer Otomar Kvěch), which was published in 2015 (edited by Markéta Kratochvílová and Jarmila Gabrielová), and the first recording of the full opera from 2014.