American Encounters: American Quartet; concert of American music from the New York Classical Players.
One of the great treasures of the Library’s music archives is a receipt. Dated 1893, it is a signed acknowledgment of a $2,000 salary payment to the distinguished Bohemian composer Antonin Dvorak, who had traveled across the world to direct our nation’s fledgling National Conservatory of Music. During his legendary years in America, Dvorak inspired a new generation of young composers to listen to songs of marginalized peoples and create uniquely “American Music.” His influence continued to resonate into the twentieth century. The New York Classical Players present an engaging retrospective of “American” string quartets, including Dvorak’s beloved Quartet in F major from 1893, Charles Ives’s rarely heard 1897 Quartet no. 1, plus quartets from the Library’s manuscripts collections by Charles Griffes and George Antheil.
