Musical Landscapes from Bohemia to America

Nashville Symphony | Ken David Masur, conductor | Chandler Currier, tuba

You know John Williams from the movies. But there's another side to America's most iconic living composer.

Williams' Tuba Concerto* is a revelation: rollicking, adventurous, and proof that the tuba can do things you never imagined. Nashville Symphony principal tubist Chandler Currier takes the spotlight. 

Around that centerpiece, the evening opens with Dobrinka Tabakova's Orpheus' Comet, a brilliant five-minute burst of energy rooted in a 400-year-old melody from Monteverdi's opera, and Smetana's The Moldau, a river journey through the Bohemian countryside written by a composer who was completely deaf.

Smetana's compatriot Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 8 closes the program in pure sunshine: folk-inspired, bird-call melodies dancing through the orchestra with a festival of trumpet fanfare.