Dvorak's New World Symphony PROGRAM NOTES

  Born to a poor family in Bohemia in 1841, Dvorak’s parents somehow managed to find the means to provide young Antonin with music lessons with the local school master. By the age of six he showed promise as a violinist and later began studies with an organist in a nearby town. In 1857 Dvořák entered the Prague Organ School where he received a comprehensive foundation in music theory and performance and then spent several years as a violist in a dance orchestra. In 1871 he left the orchestra to devote full time to composing. Although his career got off to a slow start, largely due to anti-Czech sentiment in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Dvorak’s reputation soon spread to other parts of Europe where his international career as a composer became clearly established.

A proud Bohemian patriot who lived under the iron fist of the Austro-Hungarian Empire from the age of 26, much of Dvořák’s music is a testament to Czech nationalism. Written in a style that has been described as a re-creation of a national idiom with that of the symphonic tradition, Dvorak absorbed the folk influences of his native Bohemia and found effective ways to use them. His nationalistic credentials attracted him to Jeannette Thurber, founder of the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York City, whose agenda was to establish a distinctly American school of composition and help American composers shake off the European influences that still held sway in much American concert music.

Thurber immediately asked Dvořák to serve as director of the conservatory, a post that he readily accepted. After settling into his new life in New York in 1892, Dvořák began conceiving his ninth symphony – one that could serve as a blueprint for an “American” symphonic sound. 

Given the extent to which Czech folk music influenced his own work, Dvořák was curious to discover the music being created in the relatively young United States. Two folk traditions caught his attention. First were the Black spirituals introduced to him by one of his National Conservatory students, Harry T. Burleigh, who had learned the songs from his formerly enslaved grandfather. The second was the music of Native American artists, which Dvořák had come to know through performances by members of the Iroquois tribe in Prague, as well as music of the Oglala Sioux tribe he heard in Buffalo Bill’s “Wild West Shows” in New York.

Dvořák believed the foundation for an American symphonic style lay in the music of African Americans and Native Americans. In composing his New World Symphony, however, Dvořák did not incorporate existing spirituals or Native American music into his score. Instead, as in his eighth symphony, he crafted melodies and rhythms inspired by folk traditions and married them with the lush harmonies and symphonic structures of European Romanticism. The musical themes of the New World Symphony are suggestive of Bohemian dance blended with spirituals and Native American music. Its slow movement English horn solo, reminiscent of an African American spiritual, has become one of the best-known melodies in all classical music, and given the title “Going Home.” 

Following its enthusiastic 1893 premiere before a sold-out crowd at Carnegie Hall, theNew World Symphony has remained one of the most beloved symphonies in music history - a work that weaves together musical traditions from three continents - North America, Africa, and Europe – into a remarkable tapestry of sound that’s familiar to listeners on either side of the Atlantic.

Conductor Leonard Bernstein once called Dvořák’s final symphony “truly multinational in its foundations,” and the work’s popularity has since achieved interstellar status: One of the cassette tapes astronaut Neil Armstrong brought with him onboard the Apollo 11 mission to the moon was a recording of the New World Symphony.

    Born in 1809 in Hamburg, Felix Mendelssohn grew up in the most intellectually stimulating circumstances imaginable. As the grandson of the renowned Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, and the son of one of Berlin’s most successful bankers, his education included art, literature, languages, and philosophy as well as music. In addition, there were stimulating interactions with the frequent visitors to the family’s salon that included artists, musicians and scientists. Both Felix and his sister Fanny were inordinately gifted musicians, and their sister Rebecca was a linguist who could read Homer in the original Greek. 

An extremely precocious composer, Mendelssohn wrote numerous works during his boyhood, among them 5 operas, 11 symphonies for string orchestra, concerti, sonatas, and fugues. Most of these works were long preserved in manuscript in the Prussian State Library in Berlin but are believed to have been lost in World War II. 

Composed in 1822 when Mendelssohn was just in his 13th year, the Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra in D Minor received its first performance in May 1823 at the family home in Berlin with the young Mendelssohn at the piano and his violin teacher Eduard Reitz performing the virtuosic violin part. 

The concerto provides a rare look at the composer’s budding artistic expression that would come to full fruition later in his life. Although written in the traditional three-movement concerto form, within this conventional structure there are subtle experiments in modulation and form that foreshadow Mendelssohn’s willingness to rewrite the rules to fit his own artistic goals. 

As with many of Mendelssohn’s early works, the Concerto in D minor was never published during his lifetime. The manuscript remained in private hands for over a century, eventually making its way back to a member of the Mendelssohn family who presented it to violinist Yehudi Menuhin in 1951. Menuhin gave the concerto its first performance in over a century at Carnegie Hall on February 4, 1952, with Menuhin himself as both violin soloist and conductor. The work is a rare treat for audiences. A first movement filled with drama ranging from brooding to playful and lyrical gives way to a gentle and eloquent second movement and concludes with a third movement filled with violin pyrotechnics and virtuosity that leaves the audience breathless.  

 With musical influences ranging from traditional Jewish prayer modes to jazz-influenced rhythms and imaginative orchestrations of the natural world, Meira Warshauer’s music has been performed to critical acclaim worldwide. In much demand for commissions, she writes for orchestras, chamber and vocal ensembles and soloists, as well as for opera. Among the many performers and commissioners of her work are the Dayton Philharmonic, the Slovak Radio Symphony, Orchestra Warsaw National Philharmonic, the Jerusalem Lyric Trio, and the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony, as well as the Charleston (SC) Symphony and South Carolina Philharmonic.

A graduate of Harvard University (magna cum laude), New England Conservatory, and the University of South Carolina, where she received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree, Dr. Warshauer has served on the faculties of Columbia College, the University of South Carolina Honors College, and Midlands Technical College, and as the Nancy A. Smith Distinguished Visitor at Coastal Carolina University. Born in Wilmington, N.C., she divides her time between Columbia and Wrightsville Beach. 

Inspired by the composer’s love for the earth and her Jewish faith, Beyond the Horizon offers a unique opportunity for audience members to become participants in the creation of the musical event. Warshauer provides the following instructions to the audience:

“Beyond the Horizon is an invitation to imagine a more perfect world. The orchestra will play the 5-minute composition twice. The first performance is for you, the listener, to absorb, as a meditation. You may close your eyes and experience the sound vibrations in your body as well as your mind. Let any emotions surface which are awakened. Concentrate on your own longings for goodness and wholeness in the world.

The orchestra will then play the piece a second time. In this second reading, you may want to stand comfortably. This time, allow your longings to take expression through your voice. Hum or sustain any vowel on any pitch which resonates in you. Do not try to sing along with the orchestra or your neighbor. All the sounds will blend. The important thing is to put your feelings, your own personal desires for wholeness and peace, into your voice. Support the sound with your breath. Feel free to move your body as space permits. Again, closing your eyes may encourage greater freedom of expression.

The goal of Beyond the Horizon is to create a soundscape that expresses our individual and collective visions for the future, and to infuse the present with this vision.”