Criticism
Largo from Dvořák’s New World Symphony
The Largo creates a virtual world within itself through its formal structures, expressing feelings associated with nostalgia, homesickness, death, and a yearning for the afterlife and, perhaps, better times. According to Anton Seidl, conductor of the NY Philharmonic Society orchestra for the 1893 world premiere of the work at Carnegie Hall, “it is not a good name, New World Symphony — it is homesickness, home longing (Biancolli 1947, 240).”
September 16, 2021