Heart of a New World by the Alabama Symphony Orchestra
The School for Scandal Overture, Op. 5 (1931)
Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Run time: Approx. 9 minutes
Based on the 1777 play of the same name by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Samuel Barber’s short concert overture, The School for Scandal, was the composer’s first ever foray into orchestral writing. It’s hard to imagine this being his first try when listening to the lush textures and deft orchestration. Critics at the time seemed to agree; the piece won him the Joseph H. Bearns Prize in Music in 1933.
The overture’s source material is a “comedy of manners”, an absurdist genre that holds a magnifying glass to the conventions of society, often focusing on personal relationships and invented hierarchies within groups. Many consider Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing or Jane Austin’s Emma to be classic examples, but modern comedies like Seinfeld, Mean Girls, or White Lotus also fall nicely into the genre.
Sheridan’s play revolves around the salons (the party, not the beauty parlor) of Lady Sneerwell—delightfully named—which serve as hub for all sorts of scandal and gossip. The wild plot includes all manner of trickery, escapades, and cases of mistaken identity, all very Shakespearean and everything you’d want from such a comedy.
Barber’s music doesn’t put forth any sort of narrative but rather exudes the spirit of the play. The opening theme flits around like gossip at a party, and the whole work is permeated by an air of mischief that undoubtedly inspired John Williams in his scoring of a Hogwarts student creeping around school or an eight-year-old laying traps for intruders.
A comedy of manners is, at its core, about expectations and the boxes people are expected to fit into. Barber’s overture feels a bit like a musical version of this, playing with the conventions of what an overture “ought” to do. He introduces dramatic themes, lyrical themes, and high contrast, but all with a raised eyebrow. The gestures are just a bit too obvious, the contrasts a bit too sharp, the lyrical themes too sweet, and the drama too, well, dramatic—exactly what absurdist comedy does.
Cello Concerto (2026, Alabama premiere)
Jennifer Higdon (1962)
Run Time: Approx. 25 minutes
Jennifer Higdon is one of today’s most widely performed living composers, known for music that strikes a compelling balance between novelty and approachability. Her work has earned the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2010, and a 2020 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for her Harp Concerto. Higdon has written a wide range of concertos, seventeen in all, but this is her first for cello.
What’s unique about this performance is the opportunity to hear the work performed by Julian Schwarz, the cellist for whom it was written. In getting to know Julian’s playing, Higdon was struck by what she calls his “lyrical gift,” which became the guiding force behind the piece. Melody, in her words, is at the work’s heart.
The work unfolds in four movements, the titles of each forming a kind of poetic thread: Poet; Dances; Fervent; Lines. The phrase gets at something in the way Higdon seems to think about the cello itself. There’s something inherently poetic about the instrument—its warmth, its range, and its vocal lyricism. More than that, this is music written not just for “a cellist,” but for this cellist, a distinction we do not get to experience when playing historical concertos.
Symphony No. 9 “From the New World” (1893)
Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)
Run Time: Approx. 44 minutes
Audience members who have been with us for much of this season might recognize an ongoing discussion about the American musical sound—the Great American Symphony as keenly desired as the Great American Novel. Copland, Gershwin, Bernstein, and Russian visitors like Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff; we’ve heard from them all this season. Another major player in the search for the American sound was Antonin Dvořk, a Czech composer who had made a name for himself in Europe by blending classical tradition with the folk music of his native Bohemia.
Uniquely, Dvořák was brought to the United States for the express purpose of helping to develop an American sound. Jeanette Thurber, founder of the then-prestigious National Conservatory of Music, brought him on as the school’s director. “The Americans expect great things of me,” he wrote, “and the main thing is, so they say, to show them to the promised land and kingdom of a new and independent art, in short, to create a national music. If the small Czech nation can have such musicians, they say, why could not they, too, when their country and people are so immense?”
Thurber, a wealthy philanthropist, had opened the school to both women and black students, nearly unheard of in 1892. Dvořák chose as his assistant Harry T. Burleigh, a talented black baritone who was known to sing in the halls of the conservatory. Burleigh introduced him to the folk music of America, especially African American Spirituals like “Deep River” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”. And like many Europeans, Dvořák was enamoured with tales of Native American peoples. He had become obsessed with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem Song of Hiawatha, which follows the life of the eponymous Ojibwe hero, his battles, and his tragic love with the Dakota woman, Minnehaha.
Dvořák was convinced that the future of American music lay within these inspirations. He was partially right, of course: while Indigenous music has remained largely marginalized, Black music has dominated American culture for generations. Jazz, Blues, Rock and Roll, R&B, Soul, Funk, Hip Hop, Gospel—today we can thank Black Americans for nearly every popular genre.
Dvořák was heavily criticized for his assertions, but this was nothing new for him; the use of Bohemian music in “high art” was not always lauded in Europe either. But the traditions he learned in America eventually made their way into several important compositions, most prominently the New World Symphony.
Throughout the work, Dvořák refuses to couch his reliance on spirituals. The first movement in particular, boasts a theme based quite unabashedly on “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” said to be inspired by Burleigh’s rendition. It appears for the first time about four minutes into the piece as the contrasting lyrical melody first played by the solo flute. It follows the spiritual’s contour exactly, beginning with downward steps, followed by an upward arpeggio. Sung side-by-side, the comparison is undeniable.
Dvořák himself stated that the inner two movements were inspired by Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha—the second by Minnehaha’s funeral and the third by a native ritual dance. But the second movement’s famous English Horn solo that was later turned into the song “Going Home” is also Dvořák’s direct attempt at mimicking Spiritual. The simple, touching melody gets so close that many people think he stole it from an existing song.
Today, we think of Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony as an obvious staple of the American Orchestral oeuvre, but it wasn’t always that way. Upon the work’s premiere in 1893, audiences were wary, and many felt that his “American” inspiration didn’t count as American at all. As Joseph Horowitz wrote, “The issue of whether this music sounded ‘American’ instantly ignited fierce debate. At stake were delicate issues of national identity—in particular, whether the African-Americans and Native Americans from whose music Dvořák drew inspiration could be considered representative or emblematic ‘Americans’ in the first place. In New York, a city of immigrants, Dvořák’s method was taken to heart. In Boston…[it] was termed ‘barbaric.’”
I can’t help but notice that this debate feels familiar. The question of what it truly means to be American is on our minds today as much as it was in 1893, and is an unavoidable part of this Symphony’s history. Dvořák believed that what is unique to a place is fundamental to its identity. He saw the people and cultures intrinsic to this country in the same way he viewed his Bohemian roots—an essential part of the culture. Over the years this work has become one of the most popular symphonies in the repertoire and an emblem of American music. But can we listen without considering the question of what it means to be American and who gets to claim that title?
—Notes by Valerie Sly, 2026