From The New World by Copland, Barber, Dvořák, Frá (2025/2025), Hljómsveitarstjóri Marta Gardolińska, The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, United Kingdom

Marta Gardolińska, Music Director of the Opéra national de Lorraine, conducts this programme of conflict and resolution. With its beautifully broad ranges of tonal colour, tinged with the trials of the American Civil War, it is easy to see why Copland’s score for Appalachian Spring earned him a Pulitzer Prize. Following this work, Alena Baeva will step onto the platform to perform Barber’s Violin Concerto, a piece which similarly vacillates between contentment and conflict. The ‘New World’ Symphony was one of the triumphs of Dvořák’s musical career, and has been adored by audiences ever since. Aptly it accompanied Neil Armstrong on his first trip to the moon, and in a rather more down-to-earth context, the symphony’s second movement was used in the 1973 Ridley Scott-directed ‘Hovis’ advert.