Prokofiev & Barber with Leonard Slatkin

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Program

DANIEL SLATKIN  Voyager 130
BARBER  Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Op. 24
PROKOFIEV  Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, Op. 100

Featured Artists

Leonard Slatkin, conductor
Diana Newman, soprano

Description

Legendary conductor Leonard Slatkin leads an exploration of how composers use sound to navigate scale: from the vastness of space to the weight of human experience. Daniel Slatkin’s Voyager 130 offers an opening meditation on exploration and endurance, inspired by the Voyager spacecraft still traveling through deep space decades after its launch. Son of the elder Slatkin, his work reflects a modern fascination with distance, time, and humanity’s impulse to reach beyond itself.

Soprano Diana Newman performs Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 which turns inward, setting James Agee’s evocative text as a stream of recollection — a child’s voice recalling warmth, safety, and fleeting moments just before they vanish. It stands as one of the most quietly devastating portraits of memory in American music.

The program culminates in Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, written in 1944 as World War II pressed on and later premiered amid the climactic final year of the conflict. An ode to the spirit of humanity, Prokofiev himself described the work as “a hymn to free and happy Man, to his mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit” — a statement that resonates both as aspiration and as reflection of its time.

Prelude & Talkback: Join us before and after select concerts to dive deeper into the music or take a peak behind the curtain. Check back for exact details about this concert.