Symphony No. 9, 'From the New World' New York Performances

Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” was written during his New York years in the 1890s, when he led the National Conservatory and argued that American concert music should grow from Black and Indigenous traditions as well as European craft. The symphony channels that idea through a Bohemian composer’s ear, folding folk-like turns into a large, four-movement design. At David Geffen Hall, Gustavo Gimeno places it beside Leonard Bernstein and George Gershwin, with Hélène Grimaud as piano soloist, tracing a New York line between symphonic form and American vernacular. One can hear how the “New World” is less a postcard than a debate about identity.