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Logo Concertgebouw Brugge
Logo Concertgebouw Brugge

Masterpiece Dvořák

Masterpiece Dvořák

Symphony no.9

  • commissioned by the New York Philharmonic when the Czech composer Dvořák was working at the New York conservatory
  • parts of the Ninth Symphony were inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic Native American themed poem The Song of Hiawatha
  • Dvořák thought that new American music should be based on Negro spirituals and Native American songs. He made this belief concrete in his Ninth, which not coincidentally was given the name 'From the New World'
  • A critic wrote after the work’s première: ‘It’s an idealized slave song made to fit the impressive quiet of night on the prairie.’

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