NEC Symphony + David Loebel: Beethoven, Copland, Dawson
David Loebel and the NEC Symphony mark the first day of Black History Month with a performance of William L. Dawson's 1934 Negro Folk Symphony. Also on the program is Aaron Copland's Suite from "Appalachian Spring" and Beethoven's Overture to Fidelio, op. 72.
This is an in-person event with a public live stream: https://necmusic.edu/live
Ludwig van Beethoven | Overture to Fidelio, op. 72
Aaron Copland | Suite from "Appalachian Spring" (1943-44)
INTERMISISON
William L. Dawson | Negro Folk Symphony (1934)
The Bond of Africa
Hope in the Night
O, Le' Me Shine, Shine Like a Morning Star!Program note
“I’ve not tried to imitate Beethoven or Brahms, Franck, or Ravel but to be just myself, a Negro. To me, the finest compliment that could be paid my symphony when it has its premiere is that it unmistakably is not the work of a white man. I want the audience to say: ‘Only a Negro could have written that.’”
--William Levi Dawson, 1934An almost exact contemporary of Aaron Copland’s, Alabama-born William Levi Dawson is perhaps best remembered today for his popular choral arrangements of spirituals. The recent reemergence of Dawson’s first and only major orchestral work, Negro Folk Symphony, speaks to his talent, courage and tenacity, even as it is sadly emblematic of the frustrations that hindered the careers of Black composers of his generation.
Negro Folk Symphony could hardly have had a more auspicious debut. The premiere performances in 1934 by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski—in both Philadelphia and at Carnegie Hall, one of which was nationally broadcast on the radio—were huge successes, greeted by enthusiastic ovations and positive reviews. Nonetheless, the symphony fell into undeserved invisibility almost immediately and—except for a 1963 recording conducted by Stokowski—has only reentered public view in recent years. In this respect it shared the fate of Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1, which received a highly visible debut by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra a year before that of Dawson’s work. It is impossible not to believe that the racism endemic to the American classical music world in the 1930s played a major role in the long neglect their music suffered.
Negro Folk Symphony is unified by a “Leading Motive,” first stated by the French horn at the very outset; Dawson described it as symbolizing “A link (that) was taken out of the human chain when the first African was taken from the shores of his native land and sent to slavery.” To emphasize the “folk” character promised by the symphony’s title, the first movement (“The Bond of Africa”) includes a theme derived from the spiritual Oh My Little Soul Gwine Shine Like a Star. The second movement (“Hope in the Night’) begins with music depicting, in Dawson’s words, “…the humdrum life of a people whose bodies were baked by the sun and lashed by the whip for two hundred fifty years; whose lives were proscribed before they were born.” A contrasting middle section depicts slave children at play, “unmindful of the heavy cadences of despair.”
Two spirituals—O Le’ Me Shine, Shine Like a Morning Star! and Hallelujah, Lord, I Been Down into the Sea—form the basis of the symphony’s triumphant finale.
— David LoebelNEC Symphony
First Violin
William Kinney
Joanna Peters
Yeji Hwang
Kevin Kang
Aidan Daniels
Joseph Zamoyta
Lauren Ahn
Tara Hagle
Audrey Weizer
Isabella Sun
Ava Kenney
Minkyung Kang
Kearston Gonzales
Second Violin
Ryan Tully
Eleanor Markey
Ian Johnson
Emma Servadio
Abby Reed
HyoJeong Hwang
Ravani Loushy Kay
Tzu-Ya Huang
Ashley Tsai
Sofia Skoldberg
Yirou Zhang
Jeremiah Jung
Viola
Yu-Heng Wang
Rita Hughes Söderbaum
Charlie Picone
Pharida Tangtongchit
Haobo Bi
Dylan Cohen
QingHong He
John Turner
Jiashu Yin
Nina Dawallu
Jessi Kaufman
Cello
Austin Topper
Yuxin Du
Alex Aranzabal
Yue Mao
Li-An Yu
Ethan Murphy
Ari Freed
Mina Kim
Amelia Allen
Li-An Yu
Nahar Eliaz
Angela Sun
Zanipolo Lewis
Bass
Colby Heimburger
Brian Choy
Isabel Atkinson
Dennis McIntyre
Lawrence Hall
Flute
Sadie Goodman
Amelia Kazazian §
Anna Ridenour ‡
Nina Tsai *
Piccolo
Sadie Goodman ‡
JouYing Ting §
Oboe
Yuhsi Chang *
Rebecca Mack §
Victoria Solis Alvarado ‡
English horn
Victoria Solis Alvarado
Clarinet
Sarah Cho ‡
Evan Chu §
Yi-Ting Ma *
E-flat Clarinet
Sarah Cho
Bass Clarinet
Dillon Acey
Bassoon
Daniel Arakaki
Yerin Choi
Zilong Huang *
Wilson Lu §
Andrew Salaru ‡
Contrabassoon
Daniel Arakaki
French horn
Mattias Bengtsson ‡
Grace Clarke §
Mauricio Martinez
Xiaoran Xu *
Trumpet
Maxwell DeForest §
Sebastián Haros *
Alexandra Richmond ‡
Trombone
Becca Bertekap
Devin Drinan ‡
Allie Klaire Ledbetter *
Bass Trombone
Shin Tanaka
Tuba
Hayden Silvester
Timpani
Isabella Butler §
Rohan Zakharia ‡
Mingcheng Zhou *
Percussion
Isabella Butler
Ngaieng Lai ‡
Eli Reisz
Rohan Zakharia §
Mingcheng Zhou
Keyboard
Jin Jeong
Principal players
* Beethoven
‡ Copland
§ Dawson