First and Last Masterworks on NSO Showcase

Wednesday, February 1 at 9 p.m.

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 has said, “Mahler’s First Symphony is a ‘fantastic journey,’ ending with blazing horns playing ‘bells in the air.’” Host Nicole Lacroix notes, “principal bass Robert Oppelt shines in Gustav Mahler’s famous and difficult 3rd movement solo; an ironic, minor key take on the children’s tune ‘Frère Jacques.’” “Ironic too,” she says, “because the episode describes a funeral procession for a hunter, attended by forest animals, inspired by Moritz Ludwig von Schwind’s 1850 woodcut ‘The Hunter’s Funeral Procession’ (above). Johannes 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.’” NSO Showcase airs the first Wednesday of the month at 9 p.m. on WETA Classical.