Dvořák’s New World Symphony

In his Ninth Symphony, Dvořák aimed to create musical portraits of his time in America — weaving a vibrant tapestry of Black spirituals and Indigenous folk songs with tunes from his native Bohemia. And things go bump in the night in Wagner’s ghostly overture to The Flying Dutchman and Liszt’s Totentanz, a captivating work based on macabre melodies from the medieval Mass for the Dead.