Dvořák’s New World Symphony

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Caleb Young, conductor

Maria Ioudenitch, violin

Adams wrote this “foxtrot for orchestra” as an outtake from his opera Nixon in China, set in 1972, as Chairman Mao Zedong dances with his wife at the state banquet.

It’s a whimsical piece of minimalism from a work that’s an enduring contribution to American opera.

Russian-American violinist Maria Ioudenitch, from Kansas City, performs Prokofiev’s brilliant work bridging 19thcentury Romanticism into the 20th-century rhythmic language he and others would go on to invent.

After his appointment as Artistic Director and Professor of Composition at the National Conservatory of Music of America in 1892, the conservatory management wanted the “old world” master to help establish an American sound in the concert hall. The result was Dvorak’s “New World Symphony.” There is no doubt that the Czech composer was under the spell of both African American spirituals and Native American music, but his output reflects mostly the European concert tradition.