Dvořák’s 'New World Symphony’

Antonín Dvořák composed his last symphony in the United States. The Bohemian composer drew inspiration from the music of Black and Native Americans, and the slow movement transports us to the desolate prairie. Yet alongside this ‘New World’ , the work also attests to Dvořák’s own homesickness for his fatherland. The symphony was a huge success on both sides of the Atlantic.

Old and new worlds also touch in Orewoet , a work that the Dutch composer Rob Zuidam wrote for the Concertgebouw Orchestra. In one of her mystical visions, the medieval poet Hadewijch sings of the ecstatic desire (orewoet) with which she merges with Christ as a man of flesh and blood. The soprano Katrien Baerts sings this fiery text.