“Hey, DSO—welcome back! Oh, and happy 70th, Leonard,” writes Mark Stryker in Wednesday’s (10/8) Detroit Free Press. “The Detroit Symphony Orchestra opens its 2014-15 season this weekend with a program that touches a lot of celebratory bases. On the one hand, the starry violinist Sarah Chang is on the bill to add sense of pizzazz. She’ll tackle Samuel Barber’s lush Violin Concerto (1939), which has become a staple of 20th-century repertoire. The piece is part of a season-long exploration of the concerto in America, featuring works written by Americans or premiered here. These range from familiar pieces by Barber, Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff … [to] Tobias Broström’s Trumpet Concerto and Benjamin Lees’ Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra…. Ann Arbor’s William Bolcom, one of America’s most important living composers, has written a new piece, Circus Overture, to honor the 70th birthday of DSO music director Leonard Slatkin, who reached that milestone in September. Slatkin has also dug up a piece of mid-20th-century American music that was once heard far more often than it is now, Ron Nelson’s Sarabande for Katharine. Finally, Slatkin and the DSO will turn to a 19th-century staple, the Symphony No. 1 by Brahms, as a suitable big finish.”
Posted October 9, 2014
