Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, Sunday, May 24 — It was the best I have heard of Dvorak’s From The New World Symphony. Conductor Cristian Macelaru led the San Francisco Symphony in a brilliant performance. Conductor and musicians played as though the music was written for both. The audience stood in attention, and then called Maestro Macelaru to take at least four bows. The string musicians tapped their bows on their music stands until time was up.

The program opened with Embers, 2026, written by composer Tyler Taylor, the San Francisco Commission and World Premiere Commissioned as part of the Emerging Black Composers Project. It was exciting to have the composer speak from the stage and be present for this World Premiere. He won the 2024 Michael Morgan Prize which is from the Emerging Black Composers Project created by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the San Francisco Symphony. This prize not only gives opportunities to artists, it introduces new thoughts and music to audiences. Taylor’s composition used many instruments sounds from tam-tam, tambourine, vibraphone, various drums, flugelhorn, harp, 12 foot long piano, English horn, contrabassoon. Anyone who reads this and knows about crotales can win a prize if that individual tells me what it is because I know I must have heard it. Tyler Taylor’s comments in the program book: …Embers reflects on what we are experiencing together as a larger community–united by a need to be heard, the pursuit of peace, and a desire for progress.”

Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Opus 1 by Sergei Rachmaninoff. It was originated in 1891 and a revision was made in 1917. The year, 1917, was beyond difficult. Guns were in the street of Rachmaninoff’s apartment as the Russian revolution. It was also the year that the USA joined in the first World War. He wrote, “Everything around me makes it impossible for me to work and I am frightened of becoming completely apathetic.” The Piano Concerto No. 1 was his first major work. He was beginning a world wide career as composer and pianist, but this Concerto No. 1 was not given a warm welcome at the Moscow Conservatory. His revision, in 1917, satisfied him. “I have rewritten my First Concerto, it is really good now. All of the youthful freshness is there, and yet it plays itself so much more easily. And nobody pays any attention.” In 1941 Rachmaninoff played it with the SF Symphony and Pierre Monteux at the War Memorial Opera. Too many critics decided to throw Romanticism over the bridge. Rachmaninoff made beautiful music of his own. He is not Stravinsky; he creates his own romance. The first movement, Vivace, has cascades as though Yosemite Falls turned into music. There are challenging stretches of music and then great emotion takes over. Simon Trpceski, the soloist, played as though he is a magician. He plays insanely fast and still promotes the Rachmaninoff color. The second movement, Andante, is there for the piano creating its quiet, dramatic, improvisational music. It is all new, all something not heard anywhere else. Allegro vivace, the third movement allows the opening movement to return in its chords. The piano and orchestra joined forces thanks to Rachmaninoff’s imagining of beauty.

Although writers who observe Dvorak like to be able to identify parts of From The New World Symphony as this is a folk tune, this is a spiritual, over here we have Native American flutes playing their music. Dvorak was a composer. He did not “adopt” someone else’s song. I have heard a contemporary composer who happily lifted Cole Porter’s work, assuming no one cares or no one knows Cole Porter. No, I am not going to find which music is here, like on a board game. I am glad that I now know about Harry T. Burleigh, “a Black composer and singer” who introduced Dvorak to many different American styles. All I can say is that Dvorak got it about America. It is all mixed together. We are all mixed together. At this historic time, we are all divided. Reach out to Dvorak. Let’s find our way together. Differences make US. So often foreign composers are the ones who get “America” the best. Foreigners get here and know it.

Quotations from the SF Symphony program book.