Dvořák’s New World Symphony ⬩ Four Steps to the New World

Programme

Dvořák was terribly worried about whether moving to the United States of America, where he was the director of the National Conservatory in New York from 1892 to 1895, might cost him his inspiration – whether he would be able to write music at all or would lose the source of his musical ideas being so far from Bohemia. The New World Symphony – as the first work he composed in America – showed that he had no need to worry. But throughout the work, we find traces of this tension and struggle. We also find something characteristic of Dvořák in the piece, and one of the critics at the premiere of the symphony “From the New World” captured it beautifully: He has a dark complexion, dark hair, thin in front. His short, dark beard is beginning to turn grey. The large dark eyes are steady. His face is honest and friendly and its expression reveals an open and guileless nature – but sometimes his gaze seems to turn somewhere far away…”