‘Belgian National Orchestra & Hermus’

The charismatic cellist Nicolas Altstaedt and the Belgian National Orchestra set course for America in the footsteps of Antonín Dvořák. The composer went to the US to teach and to search out the very soul of American music, which he found in African American music and the music of Native Americans. He became acquainted with spirituals, which led to his incredibly well-known Ninth Symphony 'From the New World'. Dvořák's cello concerto almost never happened; the composer found the instrument to be “too nasal in the high register and too mumbling in the bass” for a solo role in a concerto. Fortunately for us, he changed his mind and set to work after attending the premiere of a cello concerto by a fellow composer and cellist in New York.