Composed: 1886-87

Length: 3 minutes

Orchestration: piccolo, flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals, and triangle), and strings

First Los Angeles Philharmonic performance: November 10, 1949, Alfred Wallenstein conducting

Dvorák's first set of Slavonic Dances, which Simrock issued as the composer's Op. 46 in 1878, made the publisher a lot of money. In a letter to Simrock in 1885, negotiating over some new
publications, Dvorák reminded his publisher "to consider that, in my Slavonic Dances, you have found a gold mine which cannot be easily underestimated…." At the time, Simrock's mouth was watering at the prospect of a second set, so he made some major concessions to Dvorák. The composer reciprocated with the requested dances in versions for piano four-hands written in June and July 1886, subsequently orchestrated between November 1886 and January 1887. The seventh dance from this second set, in C major, takes its extroverted, rhythm-driven character from a Serbian folk dance, the kolo.

- John Mangum is the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association's Program Designer/Annotator.