Antonín Dvořák - Symphony No. 9 From The New World

Symphony No.9 in E minor, Op.95
“From The New World“

Symphonie Nr.9 e-dur op.95
“Aus Der Neuen Welt”

Berliner Philharmoniker - Rafael Kubelik

The name "From the New World" which Dvorak himself gave his Symphony in E minor, Op. 95, clearly points to the basic idea underlying this work. The contact with the folk music of another land which the Czech composer made during his years in America undoubtedly had a stimulating effect on his creative imagination-a fact which is evident both from available written accounts and from Dvorak's compositions of that period.

Henry Thacker Burleigh, who often demonstrated old plantation songs at Dvoraks house, later emphasized how deeply impressed his teacher had been by the Negro Spirituals. It was Burleigh, too, who first drew attention to the thematic relationship between the Spiritual "Swing low, sweet chariot" and the second subsidiary theme of this Symphony's first movement, introduced by the flute. It seems of little account whether Dvorak himself was aware of this similarity. But for his interest in the songs of his pupils, however, such a work as the "New World" Symphony would never have been written.

The tension built up during the slow Introduction is relaxed by the entry of the striking horn theme, which is to influence all four move-ments. The American character (lowered leading note) of the subsidiary theme, played by the flutes and oboes, is largely overshadowed by its mood of Slavonic melancholy. This and the second subsidiary theme, already mentioned, are in strong contrast to the principal subject of this clearly fashioned movement. For the composition of the Largo in D flat major, entitled "Legend" in the sketches, Dvorak was inspired, as he himself declared, by a passage from Longfellow's epic poem of the American wilds "The Song of Hiawatha", widely popular at that time.

Against a background of muted strings the cor anglais plays a broadly flowing lament. Its pentatonic melody (lacking the fourth and the leading note) creates a feeling of desolation and of endless wastes. Hiawatha, son of the West Wind, mourns the death of his wife Minnehaha, the lovely Redskin girl "From the land of the Dacotahs". Another scene from Longfellow's poem, the Indian dance at Hiawatha's wedding feast, comes vividly to life in the Scherzo. Here again, though, organically woven into the texture of the music there are recollections of the composer's Czech homeland.-No less remarkable is the work's Finale. With contrapuntal mastery Dorak here combines themes from the previous movements, some of them only suggested, with the motive material of this Allegro con fuoco, whose sharply profiled main them rings out triumphantly for the last time to crown the coda.

Dvorák worked on this Symphony from January to May 1893, and on the 16th December of that year its world première was conducted by Anton Seidi at a New York Philharmonic concert in the Carnegie Hall. According to a report in the New York Herald, enthusiastic applause for Dvorak broke out after the second movement.

Its immensely successful première launched this work, which is still the most popular of Dvorák's symphonies, on a triumphal progress of the world's concert halls.

Label: Deutsche Grammophon