Leonard Slatkin says goodbye to NSO

It’s been an eventful three years for the Nashville Symphony. Leonard Slatkin conducts his final regular season concerts as music advisor this weekend, having helped guide the orchestra to a new level of national prominence during its critical transition after the death of inspirational conductor Kenneth Schermerhorn.

“We wouldn’t be where we are today without Leonard Slatkin,” says Symphony President Alan Valentine. “The entire organization and community owe a huge debt to him.” Though Slatkin will continue to appear with the orchestra—his last concerts as music advisor will be June 19-20—the end of his term is an occasion to note.

Slatkin’s first Nashville project—a recording of works by his long-time friend Joan Tower, whose Made in America he will conduct in June—garnered the Symphony its first Grammy awards, and he led the gala opening of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center. Concerts during his tenure featured numerous premieres and commissioned works, and last year ASCAP awarded the Symphony an “Adventurous Programming” award for its focus on contemporary music.

A suitably elevated and celebratory program marks the end of this transitional period for the orchestra, enlisting the full force of the Symphony Chorus and distinguished guest vocalists. Samuel Barber’s spiritually searching Prayers of Kierkegaard is a fitting opener, since Slatkin was particularly known for his recordings of American composers such as Barber during his long stint with the St. Louis Symphony.

And he can hardly go wrong with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, as the orchestra continues—if we may twist Beethoven’s text slightly—to make music ever “more pleasantly and more joyously.”