Colorado Symphony Blog

Today, he serves as Music Director of New York City Ballet, a role that draws on a lifelong connection to ballet and the theater. His first professional experience with ballet came while he was a student at Juilliard, when he worked as an onstage pianist. Since then, he has conducted ballet companies including the Royal Ballet and Bayerisches Staatsballett.

That perspective makes this weekend’s opening work especially intriguing. Stravinsky’s La baiser de la fée was originally written for the Ballets Russes and its music pays tribute to Tchaikovsky while filtering his melodies through Stravinsky’s distinctive neoclassical language. In Litton’s hands, the piece brings together two worlds he knows intimately: the precision of the symphonic ensemble and the physicality of dance.

Then comes Bernstein’s Serenade, one of the most distinctive works on the program. Inspired by Plato’s Symposium, Bernstein’s 1954 score takes the form of a musical conversation about love, moving through a series of contrasting characters and moods. Gluzman, who has become closely associated with the work, joins Litton and the orchestra as soloist.

After intermission, Ravel takes over.

Valses nobles et sentimentales begins with the elegance and refinement of a Viennese waltz before giving way to something more unsettled. Its companion piece, La valse, pushes the waltz into increasingly dizzying territory, transforming a familiar dance into something darker, more intense and ultimately explosive.

It is repertoire that plays naturally to Litton’s strengths as a conductor: a deep understanding of orchestral color, a theatrical instinct and an ability to move easily between the concert hall and the stage.

Those qualities have been at the heart of a career that has taken Litton around the world. But his time with the Colorado Symphony remains an important part of that story.

During his tenure, Litton helped elevate the orchestra’s artistic profile while embracing opportunities to explore new territory. The orchestra released recordings of Copland and other repertoire, and in 2017 released Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, conducted by Litton and featuring the Colorado Symphony Chorus under the direction of Duain Wolfe. It was the first recording released under the Colorado Symphony’s own independent label, Colorado Symphony Multimedia & Recording.

At the time, Litton spoke about the musicians of the Colorado Symphony with the affection of someone who understood what the orchestra could become.