| Product Number | 9337* |
|---|---|
| About the Composer |  Leonard Slatkin is Music Director Laureate of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Directeur Musical Honoraire of the Orchestre National de Lyon, and Conductor Laureate of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. He also serves as Principal Guest Conductor of the Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria and Artistic Consultant to the Las Vegas Philharmonic. An active guest conductor, composer, author, and educator, Slatkin continues to perform worldwide. In celebration of his 80th birthday, his 2024-25 season includes engagements with orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Nashville Symphony, and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, along with world premieres of his compositions. A six-time Grammy Award winner with 35 nominations, Slatkin’s recordings include Naxos reissues of his Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra performances and his own family compositions. His accolades include the National Medal of Arts, Chevalier in the French Legion of Honor, and Austria’s Decoration of Honor in Silver. He is also an acclaimed author, with several books on conducting and music, including his latest series, Eight Symphonic Masterworks of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. |
| Composer/Arranger | Slatkin, Leonard |
| Voicing & Instruments | Symphony Orchestra |
| Instrumentation | The work calls for a typical 20th-century-sized orchestra, with a few embellishments: 4 3(2 EH) 3(2 Bcl) 3 (2 CbCl) – 4 4 3 1 – Tmp+4 –2 Hp, Pno/Cel– Strings |
| Rental Dept | Full orchestra score and parts available for rental. Click here to request a quote or order. |
| Difficulty | Difficult |
| Duration | 13:00 - 15:00 |
| Premier | St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, October 11 & 12, 2025 - United States Premier Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra, January 2025 - World Premier |
| Publisher | E. C. Schirmer Music Company |
Program Notes
In April of 2022, when we were all starting to come out of hiding from the global pandemic, I had the privilege of conducting the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra in a concert honoring the 50th anniversary of their becoming a professional orchestra. When we had concluded the Sixth Symphony by Gustav Mahler, I sat, somewhat exhausted, in the dressing room.
Several administrators of the orchestra came to greet me, and during the course of our chat, they asked my wife, composer Cindy McTee, if she would be interested in writing a work to honor Franz Schubert. She was flattered but declined. However, I became quite intrigued by the idea and suggested that the piece be written by me. Our concert is actually on his birthday, January 31.
Almost immediately, ideas started swirling around in my head. Should it be a totally original composition, with no musical reference to the Austrian master? Or might it be a hybrid, where various strains of Schubert fragments are heard alongside new material? I decided on the latter and used the composer’s final composition, the Symphony in B minor, as a starting point.
Schubert himself was rather poor for most of his brief life. To get his music heard, he would organize soirées at his apartment, where friends would gather to play and sing his works. These events were known as Schubertiaden. The composer was usually at the piano. When I began to write this piece, I wondered what it might be like if this tradition could be extended well past the composer’s lifetime.
The work is basically in three parts, with descriptive moments placed before each. It begins with Schubert, not seen, at the piano playing the opening of his monumental Bb Sonata. This is rudely interrupted by the orchestra, representing the guests, who arrive rather vociferously with a series of fanfares and flourishes by the trumpets, horns and flutes.
The initial section is taken from the first six bars of Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony and is cast as a passacaglia. This is a set of variations over the bass line which opens the symphony. Other elements of the first movement are introduced, but those become more and more distorted as the guests indulge in some glühwein.
Schubert is playing one of his impromptus when several more friends arrive, and they are introduced by the same instruments who greeted the earlier visitors. When they settle down, some more recent composers, perhaps Phillip Glass or Steve Reich, proceed to take Schubert’s main themes from the slow movement of his final work and alter them into a mash-up of harmonic and rhythmic glee. This becomes the second part of Schubertiade.
The guests are anxious to get home, and the music becomes more and more deafening as well as fast, with dancing turned into a frenzy. The music stops and once more, the flourishes are played, but this time, they are done more quietly. It is a signal for everyone to leave. But they do not make their way to the door until several have honored their host by performing fragments of some of his other compositions. This becomes the third and final section of the piece, a quodlibet, if you will. Sometimes these are not played exactly as the composer wrote them, but we are in a 21st-century version of a Schubertiade.
It is raining as the guests depart into the evening. A final reference to the fanfares is heard, but this time the notes are played in reverse. The composer is left at his piano, trying to complete the sonata melody that began the evening. And which, at least in this version, will remain “Unfinished.”
—Leonard Slatkin