Beethoven, Daugherty, Wagner, and Prokofiev

The 2023-2024 NSO Showcase broadcast season opens with an epic concert in which Beethoven’s graceful 4th Symphony is complemented by three dramatic, death-defying works by Michael Daugherty, Richard Wagner and Sergei Prokofiev. Last November at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Gianandrea Noseda led the NSO in the world premiere of Daugherty’s Blue Electra, a concerto commissioned by the soloist in the performance, violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, in honor of Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra10E Special airplane and the disappeared aviator’s pioneering career. Next is Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, inspired by the composer’s near-death experience at sea. And finally, the program concludes with Prokofiev’s rarely performed but masterful Symphony No. 6, written to honor the victims of World War II.