Dvořak’s ‘New World’ Symphony

There’s an American accent to this concert by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and its US-born Principal Conductor Ryan Bancroft. Started just months after the composer first docked in America, Dvořak’s much-loved ‘New World’ Symphony was composed ‘in the spirit’ of the nation’s own songs and spirituals. Only around 20 years after that, in 1914, came Charles Ives’s Three Places in New England, his vivid musical recollections of the sights and sounds of his native Connecticut. A topical new work from American composer Augusta Read Thomas opens both the concert and our series of Proms commissions celebrating the Royal Albert Hall’s 150th anniversary and its role in promoting the arts and sciences. Dance Foldings takes inspiration from the biological ‘ballet’ of proteins that a vaccine activates within the human body.

*BBC commission