There is an immense ocean and one hundred and thirty years of history that separate us from Antonín Dvořák’s ninth symphony. The crossing was made by the composer from Prague to New York in 1892, when he was 51 years old and had already achieved an enormously prestigious status. There he found a reality where everything seemed to have far more imposing dimensions. The bucolic inspiration of the rural landscapes of Bohemia thus gave way to a rejuvenating fascination with the cultures of blacks and American Indians. Then the famous New World Symphony was born.
Today the distances seem to have shortened a lot. But it is not for this reason alone that this work has become so familiar to us. Full of enthusiasm for the strength of North American societies at the time, she did not give up references to the European past. Awakens to a new way of being, doesn’t forget the centenary tradition from which it comes.
In this program, it shares the stage with the premiere of João Vasco’s first piano concerto, a composition that already in 2020 envisioned our “new world”, from the first confinement.
Algarve International Piano Festival
Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra
João Vasco – Piano Concerto (first work)
A. Dvořák – Symphony No. 9, From the New World
Antonio Rosado, piano
Adrian Leaper, conductor