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Ravel, Dawson, and Prokofiev

Sat / Jan 21, 2023 - 8:00PM

Roderick Cox presents William Dawson’s luminous Negro Folk Symphony, plus Ravel and Prokofiev.

No Longer Available

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About this Performance

Winner of the Solti Conducting Award, Berlin-based American conductor Roderick Cox presents a relative rarity along with Ravel and Prokofiev: William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony. Premiered at Carnegie Hall in 1934, it won over an enthusiastic audience and critics, one of whom wrote “[it is] the most distinctive and promising American symphonic proclamation which has so far been achieved,” and yet it was scarcely performed since. Written in the tradition of American post-Romantics, Dawson’s remarkable achievement uses African American folk material and works it into a sophisticated orchestral fabric. Virtuoso Karen Gomyo joins in for Prokofiev’s tuneful First Violin Concerto, and Cox concludes with the ultimate musical sensuality of Ravel’s Daphnis.

This performance is generously supported in part by the Kohl Virtuoso Violin Fund.

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