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Between 1884 and 1896, Dvorák visited Britain nine times - with enormous benefit both to himself and to musical life on these shores. The platforms offered by London's conductors and concert venues helped to launch him as a composer of international stature. Before his first visit to London, he was known only in the German-speaking world and his native Bohemia. By his fifth visit, his fame was on a par with that of his friend and untiring advocate Brahms.

Donald Macleod explores the circumstances of the composer's final trip to Britain which saw the world première of one of his greatest works, the Cello Concerto instigated once again by the redoubtable Royal Philharmonic Society. Since the 1891 première of Dvorák's Requiem in Birmingham, the RPS had made strenuous efforts to arrange a return visit but, from 1892 to 1895, Dvorák had his work cut out as Director of the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York, trying to establish an authentically American school of composition. He complained in letters home that his teaching duties interfered with his composing but, in spite of that, he managed to complete a number of major works, including the Biblical Songs and the Cello Concerto, both of which were on the programme of the RPS concert that eventually took place in Queen's Hall, London, with Dvorák conducting, in March 1896 ? as it turned out, Dvorák's final farewell to Blighty.