The New World, as Told by a Czech

The Dvorak in America Festival, the second installment in what Pacific Symphony promises will be an annual examination of American music, culminated Wednesday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center with the most famous “American” symphony. That Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 ( “From the New World”) is the best known symphony written in this country is not open to question. But one object of this festival has been to delve into just what it means to write American music and, in this case, whether a score written in the 19th century German style by a Czech composer really could be called an American symphony.

The festival’s artistic advisor Joseph Horowitz and UC Santa Barbara Dvorak scholar Michael Beckerman devised illuminating and entertaining arguments that it is, indeed, possible. In the end, at least one listener still heard the beloved symphony as a romantic idealization of an America that never existed rather than as a true work of the American spirit. But even so, the passionate advocacy worked to the music’s advantage, inspiring performers and audience alike. The evening ended with a thrilling performance of the “New World” Symphony conducted by Carl St.Clair, that had the Pacific Symphony playing at its peak and that encouraged us to hear familiar music anew.

Dvorak wrote the “New World” during the first of the three years he spent teaching in New York. As a nationalist in his own country, he was plainly interested in all aspects of native music, and his “American” symphony plainly makes apparent his enthusiasm for the Native American and African American music he encountered here. He also stated that parts of Longfellow’s “The Song of Hiawatha” inspired the Largo and Scherzo movements of the symphony.

Following up on the poetic references, Beckerman created a “Hiawatha Melodrama,” in which passages from Longfellow’s poem were read by the actor Francis Guinan as the orchestra performed selections from the symphony’s last three movements. The texts were cleverly selected and, sure enough, the Scherzo’s opening timpani strokes stood in nicely for the tom-toms accompanying the poem’s dancing warriors. The bird song in the Largo was suitably evoked by Longfellow’s pecking and fluttering jays and magpies, thrushes and blackbirds.

To further set the mood, during the performance of the full symphony, slides of American period paintings were projected to illustrate the inner movements. The sad tune of the Largo goes well with sentimental tributes to a dying race, as it does with languorous views of plantations, and probably hundreds of other scenes. The slide show was a good one, although the stage light was not darkened enough to make it particularly effective. What made a fine effect, though, was the lowering of the house lights during opening wind chords of the Largo, allowing the music to take us off into distant lands.

But it was nonetheless hard to hear the so-called American “accent” in the music. Some of the thematic material may be of American origin, but the use of it is purely European. And the real value of the “New World” is its ability to transcend Longfellow, who doesn’t have many readers these days beyond the occasional politically incorrect parents who may still read their kids to sleep with the sentimental verse. No amount of imagery will change the fact that Indians dance, in the Scherzo, to music that is a direct tribute to Beethoven.

Indeed, the Czech view is to see this symphony as an expression of homesickness. Given the problematic influence this symphony had on those insecure American composers who used it as a manual on how to write American music, the Czech view is one many Americans these days are also glad to embrace. St.Clair conducted the symphony like an American, happy to accept the surface for what it is--hard edges, sharply defined rhythms and lots of dramatic outbursts, and that created the sense of freshness. On the other hand, European conductors often give the score a more introspective, elegiac tinge.

The first half of the concert demonstrated something of the American musical life Dvorak encountered and maybe helped explain why his example was so powerful. The best reason today to hear Victor Herbert’s trite Cello Concerto No. 2 is to demonstrate how much better suited the German emigre would be to the operettas he later wrote. George Chadwick’s Scherzo in F (which the New England composer inserted in to his Second Symphony) is Mendelssohn with an American accent. But, in the spirit of the festival, these pieces were enthusiastically conducted by St.Clair. Allison Eldredge played Herbert’s solo cello part with stoic straight face and an elegantly lyric tone.