St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Leonard Slatkin returns to SLSO to conduct concert series featuring Gershwin
“I subscribe to the Duke Ellington line: ‘There are two kinds of music — good music and the other stuff,’” Leonard Slatkin says.
The idea that music is music and that genre constraints are … not meaningless, certainly, but at least not always helpful, informs the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concerts on Jan. 12, 13 and 21. For them, SLSO Conductor Laureate Slatkin will lead three different programs, each headlined by one of George Gershwin’s major orchestral works: a suite from “Porgy and Bess,” “An American in Paris” and “Rhapsody in Blue.”
Not incidentally, this year marks the 100th anniversary of “Rhapsody” and the 50th anniversary of the SLSO’s initial recordings of Gershwin’s orchestral pieces — with Slatkin on the podium, no less. Naxos Records recently remastered and reissued the records.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
By Daniel Durchholz
“I subscribe to the Duke Ellington line: ‘There are two kinds of music — good music and the other stuff,’” Leonard Slatkin says.
The idea that music is music and that genre constraints are … not meaningless, certainly, but at least not always helpful, informs the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concerts on Jan. 12, 13 and 21. For them, SLSO Conductor Laureate Slatkin will lead three different programs, each headlined by one of George Gershwin’s major orchestral works: a suite from “Porgy and Bess,” “An American in Paris” and “Rhapsody in Blue.”
Not incidentally, this year marks the 100th anniversary of “Rhapsody” and the 50th anniversary of the SLSO’s initial recordings of Gershwin’s orchestral pieces — with Slatkin on the podium, no less. Naxos Records recently remastered and reissued the records.
Read more here.
Oregon Arts Watch: Footloose and fancy free: Leonard Slatkin with Oregon Symphony
After a gap of many years, the conductor/composer/author returns to Portland for a concert of Mason Bates, Beethoven, and Elgar’s ‘Cello Concerto’ with Joshua Roman.
Leonard Slatkin is footloose and fancy free. No longer tethered to the music directorship of a particular orchestra, the internationally acclaimed conductor can pick and choose which orchestra he gets to lead. This weekend (October 14-16), it will be the Oregon Symphony in a program that includes works by Beethoven, Elgar, and American composer Mason Bates.
Over a 50-plus-year career, Slatkin has racked up six Grammy awards, 35 Grammy nominations, over 100 recordings, and directed every major orchestra around the world. And the concerts in Portland are not the first time that he has visited the Rose City.
Oregon Arts Watch
By James Bash
After a gap of many years, the conductor/composer/author returns to Portland for a concert of Mason Bates, Beethoven, and Elgar’s ‘Cello Concerto’ with Joshua Roman.
Leonard Slatkin is footloose and fancy free. No longer tethered to the music directorship of a particular orchestra, the internationally acclaimed conductor can pick and choose which orchestra he gets to lead. This weekend (October 14-16), it will be the Oregon Symphony in a program that includes works by Beethoven, Elgar, and American composer Mason Bates.
Over a 50-plus-year career, Slatkin has racked up six Grammy awards, 35 Grammy nominations, over 100 recordings, and directed every major orchestra around the world. And the concerts in Portland are not the first time that he has visited the Rose City.
“My parents were members of the Hollywood String Quartet and used to play a series in Portland,” he said in a Zoom conversation. “That would have been in the ‘50s. I know that I came to Portland with them at least once.”
Read more here.
The Spokesman-Review: Spokane Symphony review: Leonard Slatkin conducted a visual and auditory masterpiece
Unless they had attended other performances led by Leonard Slatkin, ticketholders at this weekend’s concerts by the Spokane Symphony received something more for the price of admission than they expected, something that they should, and probably will always remember.
The Spokesman-Review
By Larry Lapidus
Unless they had attended other performances led by Leonard Slatkin, ticketholders at this weekend’s concerts by the Spokane Symphony received something more for the price of admission than they expected, something that they should, and probably will always remember.
They expected, and certainly received, very fine performances of three works for orchestra: “Double Play”, by Cindy McTee, “Francesca da Rimini,” by Piotr Tchaikovsky and the Symphony No. 1 in C minor of Johannes Brahms. What they could not have expected was an emotional, and even visual journey of such variety, intensity and breadth.
Read more here.