Tchaikovsky’s Fourth: Devotion and Destiny

Item details

Date

Saturday, Jan 24, 2026 7:30PM

Name

Tchaikovsky’s Fourth - Devotion and Destiny

Description

📍 This concert takes place at Powell Hall
🕒 1 hour, 45 minutes (including intermission)

Dima Slobodeniouk, conductor (SLSO debut)
Wu Wei, sheng (SLSO debut)

Lotta Wennäkoski Flounce
Jukka Tiensuu Teoton (Concerto for Sheng and Orchestra) (First SLSO performances)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4

An “energetic pulse” and “a feeling of space” were Lotta Wennäkoski’s two goals as she penned Flounce, and both ideas weave throughout this powerful program. Dima Slobodeniouk joins the SLSO for the first time, leading the orchestra in invigorating performances of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, a true display of both sweet nostalgia and soul-shattering passion. Wu Wei plays a stunning concerto on the sheng, a mouth organ and one of the oldest-known Chinese instruments, dating back more than 3,000 years.

A few things to know:

• Composer Jukka Tiensuu intentionally keeps the stories or meanings behind most of his music unclear; it is vitally important to him that each listener hears his music with only their own experiences as context.
• As a dedicated advocate for new music, Tiensuu advised in a lecture at the University of California San Diego in 2000 that “we can escape the present, to the world of historical or folk music, but to face it, we need compositions that are born out of our own time.”
• Dima Slobodeniouk leads orchestras all around the world, but his side hobby takes him far from the podium and into the sky as an airplane pilot. “Not everything can be controlled when flying,” he described in an interview with Finnish Music Quarterly. “It’s essential to control your instruments and your nerves, but you cannot control nature. Neither can, or should, a conductor control everything.”

Tickets are currently available for subscribers. Curated Series and Compose Your Own subscriptions are on sale now.