Celebrating the New World
Symphony New Brunswick expands across the stage to perform one of the most famous pieces of classical music, Anton Dvorak’s New World Symphony. Written while Dvořák was living and working in New York City, the symphony purportedly incorporates the composer’s reflections on his American setting. The piece premiered at Carnegie Hall on December 16, 1893 and has been performed throughout the world with regularity ever since.
Dvorak paid homage to the folk music that he heard in the new world just as Malcolm Forsyth recognizes basic aboriginal music traditions in his violin concerto. Together these two pieces truly celebrate the New World’s influence on classical music
SNB welcomes Tara Louise Montour, both Mohawk and Montrealer, to the Maritimes to play the solo violin in the Trickster Coyote- Lightning Elk, written for her by Malcolm Forsyth, one of Canada’s iconic composers.
Considered North America’s foremost classical Aboriginal violinist, Tara-Louise Montour distinguishes herself by commissioning works based on Native North American themes for solo violin and orchestra. Critically acclaimed as magical, the new concerto “Trickster Coyote Lightening Elk”, written especially for Tara-Louise by composer Malcolm Forsyth had its World Premiere at the Brott Music Festival Aug. 14..2010, Boris Brott conductor. This performance was made possible with the financial assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation. Miss Montour’s first commissioned work,Farewell to the Warriors, recorded on CD with the Thunder Bay Symphony, Geoffrey Moull conductor, was nominated for a 2005 Juno Award.
“SNB will take Dvorak’s New World Symphony, one of the best-known and loved orchestral works of all time, and explore the influences that surround it. Dvorak wrote this piece during his three-year sojourn in New York, suffering from great homesickness for his native Bohemia, but at the same time greatly inspired by the music and energy of the “New World”.
Malcolm Forsythe’s violin concerto, “Trickster Coyote, Lightning Elk”, based on a Cree folk legend, is an outpouring of the composer for his adopted Canadian homeland. We are very lucky to be performing it with the work’s dedicatee, Tara-Louis Montour.
Add to that “Dances of Galanta”, a virtuosic orchestral piece by Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodaly, influenced by the folk music of his homeland.
And so, we celebrate the folk music cultures of Central Europe and North America, both of which contributed to the symphonic explosion which is Dvorak’s “Symphony from the New World”.” Michael Newnham
