"ZLONICE - BELLS AND RAILWAY MUSEUM" Zlonice by AsturArcadia

It is unfortunate that the composer Antonin Dvorak should be famous outside his native country for just a few works - namely his Ninth ('From the New World') and possibly the Eighth Symphonies. And of these it is the second movement of the Ninth, used in Britain in the 1980s as the soundtrack for a bread advertisement on television(!) which is supposed to be the most memorable.

But before the Eighth came Symphonies One to Seven. Together with a great many more delightful works, including operas.

And at the beginning came Symphony Number One, which is a magnificent piece in four movements, with the title 'The Bells of Zlonice'. There is only one Zlonice in the Czech Republic (or in the former Czechoslovakia), and this is it. Movements One and Four are the ones in which the bells ring out - great, heavy, ponderous and sweeping ones.

I love Dvorak's works. Of the symphonies, my favourite, perhaps, are the Third (especially the long, gracious Second Movement) and the Fifth (the Third Movement is a pastoral delight, reminiscent of his Slavonic Dances). Be happy. Listen to Dvorak. I do, and I am.

If you ever pass through the little town of Zlonice, do visit the railway station and its museum (and listen out for those bells).