Tippett: 4 Spirituals (‘A Child of Our Time’) – Leonard Slatkin conducts

Here are four spirituals from Sir Michael Tippett’s oratorio ’A Child of Our Time’: Steal Away; Nobody Knows the Trouble I see; O by and by; and Deep River. They come from the Last Night of the Proms 2001 in London’s Royal Albert Hall, just a few days after the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers in New York. Leonard Slatkin, the scheduled principal conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, felt he could not preside over the usual ’Last Night’ shenanigans, with so many of his fellow Americans having just lost their lives, so the programme was changed to reflect the sombre prevailing mood.