Musical Moments #5 - Bach Festival Society performs Antonin Dvořák

“Music is the shorthand of emotion.”
–Leo Tolstoy

The Czech composer Antonín Dvořák was hired by a wealthy patron to direct the brand-new National Conservatory of Music of America, an entity founded in New York City to train all music students without regard to race, gender, or ability to pay. 

Soon after arriving in America in 1892, Dvořák composed and referred to his Symphony No. 9 as "From the New World." The excerpt offered today is the second movement featuring the longing, melodic sounds of the English horn played by Lora MacPherson. 

Dvořák reported that his inspirations were Native American and African American music; in fact, Harry Burleigh, a famous arranger of spirituals, introduced the composer to the genre. Dvořák was so taken by the music that he wrote his own tune as an attempt to embody the passion of the spiritual. Years later one of his students, William Fisher, put words to this yearning melody and called the song, “Goin’ Home.”  Dvořák finished the work while summering in Spillville, Iowa surrounded by family and other Czech immigrants. 

The symphony was premiered in Carnegie Hall in December of 1893 and has been an orchestral staple ever since. This recording of a live, unedited performance is from this past February’s performance on our 85th Annual Bach Festival.  

Today, let’s give the Choir a rest and ask our Orchestra to take the lead. It would be difficult to offer you a more exquisitely crafted and beautiful piece from one of my favorite composers, Mr. Dvořák. 

–John V. Sinclair, Artistic Director and Conductor

“In African American melodies I have discovered all that is needed for the creation of a great and noble school of music. These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are the folk songs of America, and your composers must turn to them. All the great musicians have borrowed from the songs for the people.”
–Antonín Dvořák

Listen on YouTube

---