Storgårds & Hadelich Barber, Brahms & Bach

Three things to know:

1. Our Principal Guest Conductor, John Storgårds, leads the NAC Orchestra in works overflowing with passionate melodies and tranquil reflections.
2. Grammy Award-winning violinist Augustin Hadelich returns to Southam Hall for his long-awaited NAC Orchestra debut.
3. Johannes Brahms composed his pastoral Third Symphony during his summer holiday in a German spa town.

While many American composers of the 1930s incorporated jazz into their music, Samuel Barber remained true to the expressive language of 19th-century Romanticism in his Concerto for Solo Violin and Orchestra. Experience moments of heartfelt lyricism and pulse-racing virtuosity when Augustin Hadelich—whose performances “reveal something from a plane beyond ours” (Washington Post)—brings Barber’s beloved work to life in his NAC Orchestra debut.

It may have taken Johannes Brahms more than 20 years to write his First Symphony, but his Third Symphony flowed from his pen during one tranquil summer in the German spa town of Wiesbaden. The serenity of Brahms’s surroundings is woven throughout the work—from the unbridled joy of the opening tune to its hushed final moments, where the last of Brahms’s mesmerizing harmonies evaporates into silence.

And Finnish composer Kalevi Aho pays homage to J. S. Bach by reimagining the final work the Baroque composer wrote—Contrapunctus 13 from The Art of Fugue—in a ravishing arrangement for string orchestra.

Post-Concert Talkback
Stay after the concert for a special onstage Q&A in Southam Hall with John Storgårds, NACO Music Director Designate, and journalist Paul Wells.