Karina Canellakis & Barbara Hannigan with Barber, Ives & Stravinsky

John Adams - aria 'This is prophetic!' from Nixon in China, Samuel Barber - Medea's dance of vengeance op.23a, Charles Ives - Three places in New England (large orchestra version), Samuel Barber - Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Igor Stravinsky - Symphony in three movements. Program John Adams aria 'This is prophetic!' from Nixon in China Samuel Barber Medea's dance of vengeance op.23a Charles Ives Three places in New England (large orchestra version) Samuel Barber Knoxville: Summer of 1915 Igor Stravinsky Symphony in three movements An All-American program with Karina Canellakis conducting the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest and Canadian superstar soprano Barbara Hannigan. 'Things we've lost' 'This is Prophetic' comes from John Adams' opera Nixon in China and is a scene in which Nixon's wife sketches a peaceful future for the world. That image is cruelly disrupted by the 'Dance of Vengeance', a concert piece based on Samuel Barber's ballet suite Medea. Medea's husband's infidelity makes her murderous. He wrote the original suite in 1946 and it is presumed that Barber's anger and aversion to World War II are also expressed in it. Two years later, he composes the much more delightful Knoxville: Summer of 1915 in a short time. 'It expresses the feelings of loneliness, wonder and loss of identity of a child, in that marginal world between dusk 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 sketches his own atmosphere for each place. Quotations of striking, folk tunes regularly cross through his music, typical Ives. Adams, Barber and Ives share the stage with Stravinsky, who became an American citizen in 1945. That same year Stravinsky completed his Symphony in Three Movements. He himself conducted the New York Philharmonic at the premiere in early 1946. He is said to have called the work his 'war symphony', but Stravinsky also says 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.'