The orchestral fantasy Schubertiade by Leonard Slatkin, a world-renowned American conductor and composer, was commissioned by the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra and premiered in Japan in January 2025. Both the title and the extra-musical plot described in the score refer to the tradition of musical feasts that Franz Schubert organised with his friends in his Vienna apartment. Over the three movements, Slatkin presents the imaginary course of such an evening, weaving in themes from Schubert’s scores, including the first bars of the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony in an intricate passacaglia form.
Aaron Copland is considered one of the most representative composers of twentieth-century American music. In the 1920s, he studied at Nadia Boulanger’s school in Paris, where he established his neoclassical style, which he combined with elements of folk tradition and jazz. His work, distinguished by technical skill and evocative extra-musical imagery, shows many similarities to film music. These features can be found in the ballet Appalachian Spring, composed in 1944 in collaboration with the outstanding choreographer Martha Graham and orchestrated a year later in the form of a suite.
Sergei Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2 was successfully performed for the first time in 1908 in St Petersburg and remains the most highly regarded of the Russian composer’s symphonic works. The universal language of late Romantic symphonic music, the expressive and aesthetic message of the work (an intense blend of drama and lyricism), as well as elements of melody with a distinctly Russian provenance, point to strong links with the work of Pyotr Tchaikovsky, to which Rachmaninov readily admitted.
Robert Losiak
