Conductor Andris VECUMNIEKS
Programme:
Antonín Dvořák Symphony No. 9 “From the New World” in E minor, Op. 95
CONCERT CONVERSATIONS WITH GORAN GORA @LNSO.
“Concert Conversations with Goran Gora” is a new venture by the LNSO. During this season we have listened together to symphonic hits by Tchaikovsky, Bartók and Beethoven, and the young people’s season will be crowned by one of the most popular symphonic works of all – Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony “From the New World”.
The greatest composer of the Czech Romantic era, Antonín Dvořák, spent a few years at the end of the 19th century as director of the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York. As a newcomer to the American musical world, Dvořák turned out to be one of the first to hear in the music of North America’s Native American and Black populations a marvellous source of untapped possibility. Dvořák drew on that source and wove what he found into the symphony “From the New World”, which holds both wondrously beautiful lyricism and great symphonic power.
This symphony is a vivid and powerful chapter in Antonín Dvořák’s life story. In it we hear a longing for home, for creative fulfilment and for the chance to prove oneself. The work is like the recollections of a lone wanderer after a long journey through uncharted lands, and its emotional richness will leave no one unmoved.
“Concert Conversations” are intended for young people and for everyone else who wants to discover (or is at least willing to try to discover) in classical music the kind of insight that can be useful for developing the imagination, taking in the world’s cultural landscape, stimulating the mind and observing the relationships between people.
These are not cocktail concerts but the presentation of one solid classical hit. Before that symphonic hit is heard – historically absorbing details, a look at the composer’s frame of mind at the moment of writing the work, the context of the age and the telling musical details to listen out for.
The host of the Concert Conversations, Goran Gora, is a singer-songwriter and theatre composer with considerable experience of listening to classical music, a good ear and a wish to explore the secrets of music.