Former NSO Music Director Leonard Slatkin returns to lead the NSO in a program shaped by memory, affection, and musical homage. Slatkin’s Schubertiade looks back to the intimate gatherings where Franz Schubert and his friends shared music, while Joan Tower’s Love Returns, an NSO co-commission written for saxophonist Steven Banks, brings that spirit of musical exchange into the present. Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 3 closes the concert with all the trappings of the composer’s Russian style, from the melancholic opening to the angst-ridden, frenzied finale.

At this concert, music becomes a conversation between generations—the composers who came before and those finding something new to say.