Ottawa, ON Canada – National Arts Centre Orchestra – Kodály, Brahms, Dvořák

PERFORMERS
Yosuke Kawasaki, violin
National Arts Centre Orchestra
Xian Zhang, conductor

PROGRAMME
Kodály: Dances of Galánta
Brahms: Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77
Dvořák: Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, “From the New World”

VENUE NOTE:
Three things to know:

Xian Zhang, the Seattle Symphony’s first female Music Director, returns to Ottawa to conduct a program rooted in Eastern European folk music.
The NAC Orchestra’s beloved concertmaster, Yosuke Kawasaki, steps into the spotlight to perform Johannes Brahms’s Violin Concerto.
An interstellar symphony: Astronaut Neil Armstrong brought a recording of Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony aboard the Apollo 11 mission to the moon!
In his “New World” Symphony, Antonín Dvořák sought to create a portrait of America, inspired by his travels across the United States. The result is a musical tapestry of international scope, in which Dvořák weaves elements of African American spirituals and traditional Native American music with tunes from his Czech homeland in an endless stream of ear-catching melodies.

Johannes Brahms may have taken 25 years to compose a violin concerto for his close friend, Joseph Joachim, but it was worth the wait. In his only work for solo violin and orchestra, Brahms unleashes the full expressive potential of the violin with music of sublime lyricism, stormy emotions, and a foot-stomping finale inspired by Hungarian dances.

And transport yourself to late 19th-century Hungary in Zoltán Kodály’s Dances of Galánta—a vibrant exploration of the town’s folk music that travels from profound sorrow to breathless bliss.