Two Wolfgangs

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“The Requiem is beautiful, like everything Mozart made, but it’s also profoundly scary. It sucks your measly soul into its wild dark maw and swallows it whole.”

Later today (Sunday, November 20), I’m going to see the St. Louis Symphony and Chorus perform Mozart’s Requiem, about which I am very excited. My friend Patty is singing, which is always a pleasure, and I’m going with my longtime pal Cat Pick, also always a pleasure. I didn’t write the program notes for this concert, but as it happens, I did write about Mozart’s Requiem for the Dallas Symphony a couple of seasons ago. Here’s an oldie-but-hopefully-goodie: Wolfgang Rihm’s Trio Concerto and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem. These notes were originally published in a somewhat different form, in the spring of 2015, but I hold the copyright, so here they are in their original incarnation.

wolfgangs

Leonard Slatkin Returns!

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Here I am in front of an old German poster at the wonderful City Museum, in St. Louis.

This weekend (November 11 through November 13), Conductor Laureate Leonard Slatkin returns to the St. Louis Symphony for a program featuring Barber, Copland, Gershwin, and a recent, deeply personal original composition about his late parents. My program notes begin on p. 33 this time (I didn’t write the Youth Orchestra notes that precede them).

http://tinyurl.com/jufl45t