9, subtitled The Bells of Zlonice (Czech: Zlonické zvony), was composed by Antonín Dvořák during February and March 1865.
It is written in the early Romantic style, inspired by the works of Ludwig van Beethoven and Felix Mendelssohn.
Dvořák submitted the score for a competition in Germany, but never saw it again, and always believed it was destroyed or irretrievably lost.
However, in 1882, an unrelated person named Dr. Rudolf Dvořák, a 22-year-old Oriental scholar, came across the score in a second-hand bookshop in Leipzig, and bought it.
Its authenticity was proven beyond doubt, but it did not receive its first performance until 4 October 1936 in Brno, and even then, in a somewhat edited form.
[3] The orchestra was conducted by Milan Sachs,[3][4] who was a Czech but was most notable for his work in opera in Zagreb, Croatia (then part of Yugoslavia).
[5] Other notable recordings have been by Witold Rowicki, also with the London Symphony (Philips, 1970); the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra under Václav Neumann (Supraphon, 1987), the Berlin Philharmonic under Rafael Kubelík (DG, 1973); and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Neeme Järvi (Chandos, 1987).