The Bernstein Experience

Jahja Ling, conductor; Kelley O'Connor, mezzo

Our update of the famous “BBB” classical formula opens with Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, a work of great power ripe for rediscovery in the concert hall setting. Next is Leonard Bernstein’s Jeremiah Symphony, written in 1944 when the composer was 24 years old and desperate to call out Fascism’s destructive ascendency in Europe. Ludwig van Beethoven, too, had escape from military oppression on his mind as he wrote his glorious Emperor piano concerto while his former hero, Napoleon, laid siege to Beethoven’s Vienna. The Emperor concludes our program.