Dvorak’s “Hiawatha” Symphony — Part Two

My last posting introduced the Hiawatha Melodrama, proposing a radical re-interpretation of Dvorak’s New World Symphony. As a postscript, here is a visual rendering of the Melodrama’s fifth movement by my colleague Peter Bogdanoff. #

As concocted by myself and the Dvorak scholar Mike Beckerman, the Melodrama aligns text from Longfellow’s “The Song of Hiawatha” with music by Dvorak. The world premiere recording is part of a new themed “Dvorak and America” Naxos CD (Naxos 8.559777) featuring PostClassical Ensemble conducted by Angel Gil-Ordonez. #

The starting point of the Melodrama is Dvorak’s testimony that the middle movements of his symphony were inspired by Longfellow’s poem. In effect, the Melodrama suggests what a Dvorak “Hiawatha” cantata or tone poem might have sounded like (and Dvorak aspired to compose such a work). It also establishes some of the extra-musical imagery that fired Dvorak’s musical imagination. The New World Symphony, being quasi-programmatic, marks a transition toward the tone poems and operas Dvorak would compose upon returning to Prague; he never composed another symphony. #

“The Hunting of Pau-Puk-Keewis,” the fifth of the Melodrama’s six movements, includes sung as well as spoken text (at 3:30). Beckerman comments: “While this at first may seem far-fetched, one must remember that as soon as he returned to Bohemia in 1895, Dvorak composed a series of tone poems based on the ballads of K. J. Erben. In at least one of these, he set down the poem, line by line, beneath the music – so this process was not alien to him.” #

Here is a related visual presentation for the Largo and the Scherzo of the New World Symphony. #

I next explore “Dvorak and America” as an Aspen Institute seminar (July 9-10, as a DePauw University festival (Oct. 27 to Nov. 2), and as a Columbus Symphony festival (Feb. 20-21). #