Dvorak:   New World Symphony

Ives:      Symphony No. 3 “The Camp Meeting”

Copland:  Quiet City

                The Tender Land Suite

Czech composer Antonin Dvorak visited America in the last decade of the Nineteenth Century and was inspired to write his “Symphony from the New World” in which he incorporated melodies from African American spirituals including the elegiac “Going Home March”in the famous second movement Largo.  Although the rest of the symphony has nothing specifically “American” in its thematic material, Dvorak created a tapestry of symphony that captured the spirit and energy – and the vastness of horizon and possibility that he found here in the New World.  One of THE most popular symphonies of all time, we pair it on this evening with works of born and bred composers and voices of that New World – Aaron Copland – who is as American as Apple Pie, and native New Englander, Charles Ives – who was “ahead of his time” but comfortable now in this century!   His Third Symphony is a homage to the austerity, discipline and ethic of our New England forebears.