Karina Canellakis & Barbara Hannigan with Barber, Ives & Stravinsky

An all-American program featuring Karina Canellakis conducting the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Canadian star soprano Barbara Hannigan.

"Things We've Lost"
"This Is Prophetic" is taken from John Adams' opera*Nixon in China*and depicts a scene in which Nixon's wife paints a vision of a peaceful future for the world. That image is brutally disrupted by the "Dance of Vengeance," a concert piece based on Samuel Barber's ballet suite*Medea*. Medea’s husband’s infidelity drives her to murder. He wrote the original suite in 1946, and it likely also expresses Barber’s anger and revulsion toward World War II. Two years later, he composed the much more charmingKnoxville: Summer of 1915 in a short period of time. ‘It expresses the feelings of loneliness, wonder, and loss of identity experienced by a child in that marginal world between twilight and sleep.’ 

Folk Tunes
Charles Ives takes us to three places in New England, the far northeast of the United States. It is the early twentieth century, and he evokes a distinct atmosphere for each location. Quotes from catchy, folk tunes regularly appear in his music, typical of Ives. Adams, Barber, and Ives share the stage with Stravinsky, who became a naturalized American citizen in 1945. In that same year, Stravinsky completed hisSymphony in Three Movements. He conducted the New York Philharmonic himself at the premiere in early 1946. He is said to have called the work his “war symphony,” but Stravinsky also states that the work is not programmatic. “Composers combine notes. That is all. How and in what form the things of this world are incorporated into their music is not for them to determine.”