Brahms and Vaughan Williams

Tenderness and Turmoil

📍 This event takes place at Powell Hall

Friday, Apr 16, 2027, 7:30pm View Subscriptions Sunday, Apr 18, 2027, 3:00pm View Subscriptions

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Program

Leonard Slatkin, conductor
Olga Kern, piano

Ralph Vaughan Williams Fantasia on Greensleeves
Ralph Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 6
Johannes Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1

About this Concert

Moving from whispered lyricism to heartfelt intensity, Olga Kern blazes through Brahms’ herculean Piano Concerto No. 1 in a thrilling performance with beloved SLSO Conductor Laureate Leonard Slatkin. This concerto demonstrates Brahms’ confidence in the endurance and power of the pianist, requiring everything from sweet tenderness to searing intensity. Slatkin also leads the SLSO in his specialty, the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams. For his Sixth Symphony, Vaughan Williams quoted Shakespeare as an inspiration: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.”

- At the heart of an absolutely monumental concerto, Brahms wrote a sentimental, tender Adagio, intended to paint a musical portrait of his dear friend, Clara Schumann. Many believe that the intensity of the concerto’s first movement is also Brahms’ emotional response to Clara’s husband Robert Schumann’s suicide attempt.
- Long before Leonard Slatkin became Music Director of the SLSO, he made a surprise visit to Powell Hall to cover a very last-minute absence of another former SLSO Music Director, Walter Susskind. The music on the orchestra’s rehearsal schedule that day? Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 6.
- The final movement of Vaughan Williams’ Sixth Symphony has provoked many a conversation, defying the typical idea of a bold, show-stopping conclusion like many symphonies before. Instead, the entire final movement is marked at a pianissimo, or very soft, dynamic.