Three Generations of Romantic Composers

Nashville Symphony | Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor | Peter Otto, violin 

Three composers. Three generations. One evening that moves from contemplation to confidence.

Missy Mazzoli opens with These Worlds in Us, dedicated to her father, a Vietnam War veteran. Her piece is a haunting meditation on memory and loss that she described as the discovery that "grief is not often far from joy."

Then Nashville Symphony concertmaster Peter Otto steps into the spotlight for Korngold's Violin Concerto.* A Viennese exile who found refuge in Hollywood, Korngold essentially invented the sweeping orchestral sound we still associate with epic cinema, and this concerto, built from themes in his film scores, carries that same grandeur into the concert hall.

We close the evening with Brahms' Second Symphony, which he warned friends was so melancholy, "you will not be able to bear it." He was wrong. It turned out to be his sunniest, most pastoral work. You'll feel the arrival of spring in the final movement's unbridled joy.