Mikhail Glinka

Born June 1, 1804 in Novospasskoye, Russian Empire Died February 15, 1857 in Berlin, Germany

Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings.

Considered the “father of Russian music,” Glinka made his dreams of distinctively Russian music a reality with his first opera, A Life for the Tsar. Its 1836 premiere was such a triumph that he promptly began a second opera in 1837. But though Russlan and Lyudmila would become the greater work, it had a rocky genesis. It was set to a colorful and fantastic fairytale by the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. The tale tells of the beautiful Lyudmila, pursued by three suitors and abducted by the evil dwarf Chernomor; finally, after many trials and the undoing of assorted magical spells, she is rescued and won by her true love, the noble Russlan. Pushkin promised he would turn this into a suitable libretto for Glinka but was killed in a duel before he could. Thus, Glinka ended up with a messy stew of a libretto, and this contributed to the tepid response at its premiere in St. Petersburg in 1842.

But Glinka’s musical score was beautiful and imaginative, and Russians soon embraced it. Known for its dazzling Overture in a well-crafted sonata form, it is above all a brilliant showcase for the violins. The romantic second theme, sung by the violas and cellos, is taken from Russlan’s second-act aria as he dreams of Lyudmila on the battlefield. A vivacious coda tells us this opera will have a happy ending.

Sergei Prokofiev

Born April 27, 1891 in Sontsovka, Russian Empire
Died March 5, 1953 in Moscow, Soviet Union

Instrumentation: Instrumentation: Two flutes (second doubling piccolo) two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, tambourine, castanets, cymbals (pair), bass drum, strings, in addition to the solo piano.

Between 1918 and 1936—from the outbreak of the Russian Revolution until his permanent relocation back to the U.S.S.R.—Sergei Prokofiev lived the life of an international touring pianist, composer, and conductor, first based in the United States and later in Western Europe. Around the same time, Prokofiev’s fellow expatriate Sergei Rachmaninoff was also making his mark on the American concert scene. Audiences here largely preferred Rachmaninoff’s warmly expressive Romanticism over Prokofiev’s more forbidding Modernist style. Critic Richard Aldrich’s brutal takedown in a 1922 New York Times review was typical, dismissing Prokofiev’s compositions as having “only a very few passages that bear recognizable kinship with what has hitherto been recognized as music.” 

Of the works completed during Prokofiev’s American years, his Third Piano Concerto achieved the greatest success. He sought a more approachable style in this work, adjusting his idiom to something he hoped would appeal more broadly to American tastes. The composer played the concerto’s premiere on December 16, 1921, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Frederick Stock. Subsequent performances quickly followed in New York, London, and Paris. The accessibility and directness of this concerto have earned it a reputation as one of Prokofiev’s most popular and frequently performed compositions, aided in no small part by his pioneering 1932 Abbey Road Studios recording accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra. 

A Russian folksong-like melody for clarinet opens the concerto in unassuming fashion, but once the tempo picks up, the piano is rarely absent from the texture. Much of the piano writing in the first movement is characterized by a motoric, perpetual-motion drive that contrasts with moments of thick chordal dissonance and occasional lyrical respites, including some that revisit the opening clarinet melody. A set of variations follows, offering five distinct takes on an old-fashioned, gavotte-like theme. The finale begins with what at first seems like some sort of macabre, off-kilter waltz before growing into a veritable “argument” (to use Prokofiev’s term) between the piano and orchestra. A slower, lyrical central section approaches the kind of emotional expressiveness that we more strongly associate with Rachmaninoff, but Prokofiev’s brilliantly inventive virtuosity comes to the fore in the concerto’s conclusion.

Jonathan Leshnoff

Born September 8, 1973 in New Brunswick, NJ Resides in Baltimore, MD

Instrumentation: Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, two trombones, timpani, snare drum, vibraphone, crotales, suspended cymbal, harp, and strings.

With this weekend’s concerts, Baltimore-based composer Jonathan Leshnoff makes his first appearance of the 2026–27 season as the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Composer in Residence. Upcoming concerts will include the world premieres of his Sixth Symphony and a new Violin Concerto—two genres that occupy the core of Leshnoff’s diverse output. Longtime BSO patrons may recall past premieres here, including Starburst (2010), the Guitar Concerto (2014), and Dancing Blue Crabs! (2017). 

Rush (2008) is the earliest of Leshnoff’s growing catalog of concise, celebratory concert openers—a list that, in addition to Starburst and Dancing Blue Crabs!, includes Rogue Sparks (2017) and Score (2022). Collectively these pieces have been widely performed across the United States and abroad. Written just four years after the composer’s First Symphony (2004), Rush is a notable early example of Leshnoff’s mature, personal voice, and thus it provides a useful introduction to his characteristic soundworld ahead of this season’s upcoming premieres. 

The expressive character of Rush is made evident by its title. A scalar, stepwise motive emerges first in the orchestra’s lower register and quickly climbs through the entire ensemble. This upwelling ignites a rhythm of continuous eighth notes that persist almost without interruption through the fast sections of the piece. Frequent meter changes heighten the intensity of the music’s kinetic, forward drive. Yet despite the onrushing insistence of the principal material, Leshnoff finds several opportunities to suspend the music’s momentum in midair, as it were. Elongated melodies above sustained string harmonies provide welcome moments of contrast, most notably in two cadenza-like passages for solo clarinet and harp, respectively. Inevitably, the music’s energy erupts anew, and in one final dash, the piece arrives at its sudden conclusion.

Igor Stravinsky

Born June 17, 1882 in Oranienbaum, Russia
Died April 6, 1971 in New York City, NY

Instrumentation: Instrumentation: Two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes (second doubling English horn), two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, tambourine, bass drum, xylophone, triangle, cymbal, harp, piano celesta, and strings.

Sergei Diaghilev, impresario of the Paris-based Ballets Russes, an itinerant company consisting primarily of Russian-trained dancers, was always on the lookout for talented new composers from whom he could commission original ballet scores. A list of composers included in Diaghilev’s “stable” reads as a who’s who of early 20th century music: Ravel, Debussy, Satie, Dukas, Milhaud, Poulenc, Auric, Prokofiev, de Falla, Respighi, and Richard Strauss, among others. Diaghilev seems to have become aware of Stravinsky’s music sometime in early 1909, first at a performance of the Scherzo fantastique and, significantly, from Stravinsky’s own piano rendition of Fireworks played at a St. Petersburg Conservatory concert. Diaghilev reportedly observed that the music of Fireworks was “new and original, with a tonal quality that should surprise the public.” Stravinsky was exactly the kind of composer he was hoping to hire. Diaghilev initially had Stravinsky orchestrate some piano pieces by Chopin for a revival of the ballet Chopiniana before presenting him with the kind of “big break” that can make a young composer’s career. In the fall of 1909, Stravinsky accepted a commission to write music for a ballet enacting a familiar Russian fairy tale in which, with the aid of the magical Firebird, Prince Ivan defeats the fearsome sorcerer Kastchei the Immortal, freeing the captive Princesses and winning the hand of his beloved. Stravinsky completed the score in just under six months. The Firebird received a triumphant premiere with the Ballets Russes in Paris on June 25, 1910. 

The 1919 suite (one of three different suites published by Stravinsky) whittles down the 45-minute ballet into a concise concert work of memorable highlights. The suite begins with an “Introduction” that establishes the fairytale setting of Kastchei’s enchanted garden, in which his enemies have been imprisoned as stone statues. The “Dance” and “Variation” of the Firebird are closely related to the musical idiom of Fireworks, heard earlier in today’s concert. Next, the expressive “Round Dance” (khorovod), quoting a folk song also used by Stravinsky’s late mentor, Rimsky-Korsakov, presents music for the thirteen Princesses held captive by Kastchei; Prince Ivan, of course, falls in love with the most beautiful one. Kastchei’s “Infernal Dance” unfolds as the Firebird causes Kastchei and his minions to furiously dance themselves into exhaustion. The “Berceuse” provides a moment of stillness as the Firebird lulls Kastchei to sleep, while the “Finale,” again borrowing a folk melody found in Rimsky-Korsakov’s music, brings the ballet to a triumphant conclusion. 

Following the success of The Firebird, Stravinsky’s career direction was set. Ballet scores would remain at the heart of his output. His subsequent collaborations with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, would catapult Stravinsky to the forefront of modern composers. 

Samuel Barber

Born March 9, 1910 in West Chester, PA
Died January 23, 1981 in New York City, NY

Instrumentation: String orchestra

Like most American music lovers in the 1930s, Samuel Barber was mesmerized by Arturo Toscanini and his fiery interpretations of the great symphonic and operatic literature. In 1933, the 23-year-old composer used his status as nephew of the celebrated operatic contralto Louise Homer to pay a visit to the maestro at his summer retreat on Italy’s Lake Maggiore. They struck up an immediate friendship, and the old conductor expressed interest in performing a work by Barber, despite the fact that he generally avoided contemporary music. But Barber was by no means a typical contemporary composer. Although only recently graduated from Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute, he was a precocious artist who had already found his own creative voice: lyrical, deeply expressive and rooted in the harmonic language of the late 19th century.  

It took Barber several years to produce two works he thought worthy of Toscanini’s attention. Finally, early in 1938 he sent the maestro his newly completed First Essay for Orchestra and the Adagio for string orchestra he had fashioned from the slow movement of his String Quartet of 1936.  

Toscanini’s selection of both pieces for his evening radio broadcast with the NBC Symphony on November 5, 1938 was the ultimate promotional coup for Barber’s career. The Toscanini radio concerts had a passionate nationwide following, and by the next morning, Samuel Barber was a household name for American music lovers.  

The Adagio for Strings remains his most beloved and frequently performed composition. Called our “national funeral music,” it has eloquently expressed Americans’ grief at the ceremonies for Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945 and John F. Kennedy in 1963. In 1986, it moved a new generation in the Academy Award-winning Plantoon, mourning the young lives snuffed out by the Vietnam War. 

John Adams

Born February 15, 1947 in Worcester, MA
Resides in San Francisco Bay Area, CA

Instrumentation: Three flutes, two piccolos, three oboes, two clarinets, bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, celesta, piano, sampler, strings, adult choir, children’s choir, and pre-recorded sounds.   

When the New York Philharmonic approached John Adams in 2002 about creating a work to commemorate the lives lost on September 11, 2001 for the opening concerts of its 2002-03 season, which would fall close to the first anniversary of that terrible tragedy, the composer remembers that he said “yes” without any hesitation.   

There were indeed good reasons to refuse. Usually, Adams explained, a commission for such a major work would come at least a year in advance, but this one would need to be accomplished in no more than six months. Nevertheless, I knew immediately that I very much wanted to do this piece – in fact, I needed to do it. …I was probably no different from most Americans in not knowing how to cope with the enormous complexities suddenly thrust open us. Being given the opportunity to make a work of art that would speak directly to people’s emotions allowed me not only to come to grips personally with all that had happened, but also gave me a chance to give something to others.”   

It was hardly surprising that the New York Philharmonic would choose Adams for this special commission, for more than any other American Composer working today he has shown an extraordinary gift for taking events right out of the newspapers and turning them into eloquent works of art. In collaboration with the iconoclastic director Peter Sellars, he first stunned audiences with a singing Richard Nixon and a dancing Chairman Mao in his 1987 opera Nixon in China, based on Nixon’s dramatic visit to China in 1972. This was followed in 1991 by another topical opera, The Death of Klinghoffer, about the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro by Palestinian terrorists and the murder of one of its Jewish passengers, as well as Doctor Atomic (2005), about the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the scientific and moral crises surrounding the creation of the first atomic bomb. But creating music in response to 9/11 seemed a far more difficult task for that day was far too recent and its pain not yet cauterized.   

Adams decided that this should be quite different from a conventional memorial piece. “I want to avoid words like ‘requiem’ or ‘memorial’ when describing this piece because they too easily suggest conventions that this piece doesn’t share. If pressed, I’d probably call [it] a ‘memory space.’ It’s a place where you can go and be alone with your thoughts and emotions. …My desire … is to achieve in musical terms the same sort of feeling one gets upon entering one of those old, majestic cathedrals in France or Italy. …Even though you might be with a group of people … you feel very much alone with your thoughts and you find them focused in a most extraordinary and spiritual way.”   

Ultimately, Adams decided on a sound-collage approach that would mingle a large orchestra and mixed chorus, including a children’s chorus, with a pre-recorded tape of voices speaking words and phrases about the event drawn from a variety of sources. “I eventually settled on a surprisingly small amount of text. One is the simple reading of names [of the dead], like a litany, …starting with the voice of a nine-year-old boy [saying over and over, “missing”] and ending with two middle-aged women, both mothers themselves.”  

The two women at the end repeat an enigmatic phrase: “I see water and buildings”; these were among the last recorded words of Madeline Amy Sweeny, a flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11, as she tried to tell her supervisor what was happening on her doomed plane. Adams continues “I mixed this with taped sounds of the city – traffic, people walking, distant voices of laughter or shouting, … sirens, breaks squealing – all the familiar sounds of the big city which are so common that we usually never notice them.” These ambient street sounds are what we hear at both the beginning and the end of Transmigration, it is as though we are still outside the door of Adams’ imaginary cathedral, about to enter and later depart from the sacred space of the music.  

The composer chose other bits of texts from the New York Times’ remarkable series “Portraits of Grief”: brief, touching biographies of the victims as remembered by family members and friends. Another source was the missing-persons signs that dotted New York in the days and weeks after the tragedy.   

The completed work was given the evocative title On the Transmigration of Souls. Adams explains its meaning: “‘Transmigration’ means ‘the movement from one place to another’ or ‘the transition from one state of being to another.’ … In this case I mean it to imply the movement of the soul from one state to another. And I don’t just mean the transition from living to dead, but also the change that takes place within the souls of those who stay behind, of those who suffer pain and loss and then themselves come away from that experience transformed.”   

For its first audiences in New York in mid-September 2002, On the Transmigration of Souls seems to have had the deep cathartic effect Adams had intended; it has since traveled around the United States and to Europe as well. In 2003, it won the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Music, and in 2005 a recording made at those inaugural performances received three Grammy awards. But more than most musical works, its effect depends to a large degree on the depth of concentration and feeling its listeners bring to it. “modern people have learned all too well how to keep our emotions in check,” says Adams, “and we know how to mask them with humor or irony. Music has a singular capacity to unlock those controls and bring us face to face with our raw, uncensored and unattenuated feelings. That is why during times when we are grieving or in need of being in touch with the core of our beings, we seek out those pieces that speak to us with that sense of gravitas and serenity.”  

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Born May 7, 1840 in Votkinsk, Russia
Died November 6, 1893 in Saint Petersburg, Russia

Instrumentation: Three flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals (pair), tam-tam, and strings.  

Best to be clear: Tchaikovsky did not write the “Pathétique” as a prelude to suicide. The composer’s choice to drink cold, un-boiled water in the midst of a cholera epidemic – when all water was to be boiled – led to his death nine days after the premiere of his sixth symphony. What began as surprise that a wealthy person could die from a “poor man’s” disease, morphed into speculations of suicide, and then the myth that continues to make rounds today: Tchaikovsky intended his B minor symphony as his swan song.   

But the reality doesn’t rob the Symphony No. 6, Op. 74 of its emotive power. It remains a work of tremendous passion, hence the “pathétique” descriptor. It features some of Tchaikovsky’s most recognizable techniques: ear-catching melodies; drama; massive orchestral forces, all for the service of an ending that is not expected and anything but underwhelming.   

1. Adagio-Allegro non troppo begins with a slow, morose introduction. The strings bring in the main theme unspooling into a polyphonic, sonata form ranging from fragmented thematic statements to call-and-response between strings, woodwinds, and brass. But Tchaikovsky doesn’t let standards of form determine his direction: the concluding section shifts to a rhapsodic resignation, the second theme serving as a de-escalation, to a tender brass and woodwind chorale supported by pizzicato in the strings.  

II. Allegro con grazia reminds us that Tchaikovsky is all about movement and elegance. While 5/4 meter is not typical in the western canon, it is no less elegant than its more common 3/4 counterpart. The movement is in ternary form, featuring a more somber melody in the B section. Like many symphonists before (Haydn) and after (Price), Tchaikovsky drew upon dance meter and character. But unlike most of his fellow symphonists, this dance movement comes second rather than third. His reason?  

It serves the story, as III. Allegro molto vivace is a rush; a virtuosic caper; full of joy, confidence, and exuberance. Tchaikovsky doesn’t have time for a development section, because that’s not the point: the main theme and its variants are the draw, emerging in different textures and instrumentations, all towards a triumph that’s almost tragic. Like all good things, it can’t last forever.  

Which brings us to IV. Finale: Adagio lamentoso. The opening melody signals something tragic and sorrowful. But it’s the second melody that takes your heart and squeezes. Leaves that ache in your chest, the tears come, the ones you don’t brush away. Here is the passion, that flurry of emotion that can only be sustained for so long. That must come to an end. That must be let go.