Dvorak and his love of the Spiritual

Welcome to a special Christmas Eve programme from Radio Prague. I'm David Vaughan. Continuing a tradition that we started last year, we're going to be meeting members of a school choir here in Prague. They're pupils from the Akademicke Gymnazium, just off Wenceslas Square, one of the oldest grammar schools in the world and a school with a rich tradition. Last year we heard Christmas Carols, but this year we'll bring you something a little different. As the centenary year of the death of the great Czech composer, Antonin Dvorak, draws to a close, we'll be hearing the choir sing some of his choral music, but also, we'll be hearing some of the Gospel music that inspired Dvorak during his stay in the United States in the 1890s. So the theme won't exactly be Christmas, but there certainly is a strong spiritual thread to today's programme.