Dvořák: Symphony No. 9 in E minor "From the New World", Op. 95, B 178 (with Score)

Antonín Dvořák:
Symphony No. 9 in E minor "From the New World", Op. 95, B 178 (with Score)
Composed: 10 January - 24 May 1893
Conductor: Václav Neumann
Orchestra: Czech Philharmonic

00:00 1. Adagio — Allegro molto (E minor)
09:43 2. Largo (D-flat major)
21:21 3. Molto vivace (E minor)
29:36 4. Allegro con fuoco (E minor)

The Symphony No. 9 in E minor "From the New World (Z nového světa)", Op. 95, B 178, popularly known as the New World Symphony, was composed by Antonín Dvořák in 1893 while he was the director of the National Conservatory of Music of America from 1892 to 1895. It premiered in New York City on 16 December 1893. It has been described as one of the most popular of all symphonies. In older literature and recordings, this symphony was – as for its first publication – numbered as Symphony No. 5. The symphony was completed in the building that now houses the Bily Clocks Museum.

This symphony, Dvořák’s most popular in an international context, was written during the first year of the composer’s tenure in the United States. An ideal set of circumstances had presented themselves by this stage in his career: strong impressions of his new environment, financial independence, a sense of his role as an “ambassador” of Czech music, and his ambitions to ensure that he would not fall short of expectations. All this found Dvořák at the height of his creative energy and contributed to the genesis of a work of exceptional quality. The New World Symphony is the composer’s ninth, and also his last (nine is something of a magical number in the history of music: various world composers completed the same number of symphonies, such as Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner and Mahler). The symphony was to prove the composer’s theory of the possibility of using characteristic elements of African American and Native American music as the foundation for an American national school of composition which, in fact, did not exist during Dvořák’s time in the United States.