St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Leonard Slatkin returns to SLSO to conduct concert series featuring Gershwin

St. Louis Post-Dispatch
By Daniel Durchholz

“I subscribe to the Duke Ellington line: ‘There are two kinds of music — good music and the other stuff,’” Leonard Slatkin says.

The idea that music is music and that genre constraints are … not meaningless, certainly, but at least not always helpful, informs the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concerts on Jan. 12, 13 and 21. For them, SLSO Conductor Laureate Slatkin will lead three different programs, each headlined by one of George Gershwin’s major orchestral works: a suite from “Porgy and Bess,” “An American in Paris” and “Rhapsody in Blue.”

Not incidentally, this year marks the 100th anniversary of “Rhapsody” and the 50th anniversary of the SLSO’s initial recordings of Gershwin’s orchestral pieces — with Slatkin on the podium, no less. Naxos Records recently remastered and reissued the records.

Read more here.