Dvořák's America
programme
Charles Dutoit
conductor
Janine Jansen
violin
Maurice Ravel
Valses nobles et sentimentales, for orchestra
Jean Sibelius
Concerto for violin and orchestra in D minor Op. 47
Antonín Dvorák
Symphony No. 9 in E minor Op. 95, 'From the New World'
the music
Three masterpieces in one evening! Maurice Ravel shares with us once again his love for the Viennese waltz which can be found in many of his works. However, it is Schubert who serves as his pretext here with his two collections of Valses Nobles and Sentimentales whose title Ravel takes up without really quoting them. This beautifully orchestrated whirlwind ends in a kind of dream in which the different motifs dissipate like so many reminiscences of life. Violinist himself Sibelius leaves a Concerto in D minor of great instrumental power with bewitching melodic motifs. If it imposed itself slowly, it is today one of the pillars of the great repertoire. Dvořák composed his famous'New World' Symphony when he was director of the New York Conservatory. Defending himself for having used Indian themes, he will admit to having used the “particularities of the music of the Blacks and the Redskins by adding to it the resources of the modern orchestra”. This young and colorful nation inspired the Czech composer, nostalgic for his distant homeland, to create a work of powerful romanticism dominated by lively emotion.