For Leonard Slatkin's Swan Song With National Symphony, Audiences Offered Opportunity To Revisit Recently Performed Classical Composers And Works

The National Symphony Orchestra, in its concluding season under the musical direction of Leonard Slatkin, is offering classical music lovers, as well as those new to classical music, the opportunity to experience once again several of the Western classical masterpieces and composers performed by the orchestra in recent years. Highlights include a performance, under Leonard Slatkin, of Beethoven's Ode to Joy Symphony (#9), which will be preceded by another world premiere commission to Jefferson Friedman; Saint-Saens "Egyptian" Symphony [sic], with pianist Stephen Hough and conductor Hugh Wolff; Lorin Maazel leading Han-Na Chang in Elgar's Cello Concerto, along with works by Faure and Saint-Saens; an all-Sibelius program and Grieg's complete incidental music to Peer Gynt, under Vladimir Ashkenazy; a performance of Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony (#2), under the NSO principal guest conductor, Ivan Fischer; Ivan Fischer leading an all-Beethoven program featuring the Violin Concerto with Nikolaj Znaider and Symphony #5; Leonard Slatkin leading Thomas Hampson in a program of Mahler ['Songs on the Death of Children' and Symphony #6]; and Leonard Slatkin leading a program of Mozart's Magic Flute Overture, Brahms' Violin Concerto with Sarah Chang, and John Corigliano's Symphony #2.

Mr Slatkin will also conduct a concert performance of Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin and will lead a Composer Portrait program featuring the music of Aaron Copland. Grawemeyer Prize Winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis has also been commissioned by the orchestra to prepare an orchestration of Five Etudes by Claude Debussy. Other featured works are European classical masterpieces by Handel [Messiah], Mozart [flute concerto with Emmanuel Pahud], Schubert, Paganini [Hillary Hahn], Brahms [Emmanuel Ax], Liszt [Jean-Yves Thibaudet], Verdi, Dvorak, Smetana, Rimsky-Korsakov, Debussy, R. Strauss, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev [under Hans Graf], Bartok [Midori], Poulenc, Vaughan-Williams, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, and Dutilleux; and somewhat corresponding American classical works by Silvestre Revueltas, Irving Fine, David Del Tredici [Final Alice], and Christopher Rouse [Symphony #2]. Also featured will be William Schuman's "Prayer in Time of War," which is apparently a last minute substitution for an earlier scheduled work by Purcell. The orchestra is respectfully holding open a program for its conductor laureate -- the great cellist and humanitarian Mstislav Rostropovich, who is now in hospital in Moscow, the Russian Federation. (UPDATED)

National Symphony Orchestra 2007-08

























United States Air Force Memorial.

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