Hendersonville Symphony Orchestra

Our season opener celebrates composers who preserved their identity amidst pressures to conform to the status quo. Dvorak refused to Germanize his name for his publishers, Sibelius rejected continental Romanticism, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a descendant of enslaved Africans dealt with racism and elitism his entire life in late 19th century Britain. Each one of these pieces are the works for which these composers derived their fame, and each are a statement of resistance to oppression.