Pam Blaine, the Pacific Symphony’s vice president of education and community development—attended the “Dvořák and America” concert.
Eshkenazy, a native of Bulgaria, got his first look at the visual materials that would be used in the youth orchestra’s concert during the December retreat. “We talked about the paintings and how they were portraying America through the eyes of the times,” he says. “There was this openness and endlessness and vastness, which Dvořák sometimes actually found depressing; he was more used to Bohemian-Moravian smallness. Joe is making a case that is very important, especially for an Eastern European like me. In school we learned that it was Dvořák’s sadness and his Bohemian past that made him recall those themes he used in the symphony. That’s what was presented to us, not that the themes sound the way they do because he had listened to some African American and Native American
Michael Zirkle
New Light on an Old Canvas
Accompanied by Joseph Horowitz, bass Kevin Deas sings a spiritual at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill as part of “Dvoˇrák’s American Accent,” a free chamber music event for students and the public.
music. It has made a dent not only on the kids, but on me and everybody around me. Some people argue that this is the first truly American symphony. “At the retreat,” Eshkenazy continues, “we played musical examples from the symphony, saw the art that Dvořák was looking at, the music he was hearing from African Americans and Native Americans—everything that was surrounding him and that we know he was present for. The kids were asked for their opinions about whether this was helpful or not in interpreting the piece. Some said they were definitely enriched by it. Different kids said, ‘Well, I just love how it sounds. Maybe historical data helps, but it’s still absolute music, not programmatic.’ They were encouraged to form their own opinions. And that’s the important thing, because a strong stand or opinion in a musician brings out better playing.” Many of the students involved in the Dvořák projects have not only read Horowitz’s book Dvořák in America but have had access to From the New World: A Celebrated Composer’s American Odyssey, an interactive DVD produced by Robert Winter and Peter Bogdanoff. (Both the
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book and the DVD were underwritten by an education grant that Horowitz, with organizational sponsorship from the League of American Orchestras, secured from the NEH in 2001.) And all three of this year’s “Dvořák and America” projects have involved teachers who attended a Dvořákfocused training seminar that Horowitz presented in Pittsburgh in the summer of 2010. They include a choral director at four Orange County elementary schools; a media specialist at Buffalo Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts (a public school with a largely African American student population); and American history teachers at two North Carolina high schools, one in Wilmington and one in Mecklenburg County. All of their students—about 120 of them between the two groups—were bused to Raleigh for the “Burleigh Show” and the “Dvořák and America” concert on February 17. “Really deep scholarship is the fountainhead for this project,” says Scott Freck, the North Carolina Symphony’s vice president for artistic operations and general manager. Freck was especially pleased that history teachers and students were involved in the North Carolina events. “So often symphony
spring 2012