First and Last

February’s NSO Showcase features two massive symphonic masterworks: Mahler’s first and Brahms’ last. As the music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, Gianandrea Noseda commented: Mahler’s First Symphony is a “fantastic journey,” ending with blazing horns playing “bells in the air”. Principal bass Robert Oppelt shines in Mahler’s famous and difficult 3rd movement solo...an ironic, minor key take on the children’s tune “Frère Jacques.” Ironic too, because the episode describes a funeral procession for a hunter, attended by forest animals, inspired by the 1850 woodcut “The Hunter’s Funeral Procession” by Moritz Ludwig von Schwind.  

Brahms’ last symphony, his 4th, is a masterpiece of such staggering power that Leonard Bernstein once devoted a 38-minute lecture to the first movement alone, stating that Brahms succeeded in creating a miracle of musical alchemy..."something out of nothing.”