Name: Encountering Nature
Start: 2026-08-05T18:00:00
Location: Riverwalk Center

Michael Stern

William Lewis

Eliane Menzel

Yoann Combémorel

Thacher Schreiber

National Repertory Orchestra

“Encountering Nature” turns our American Adventures season toward wide skies and untamed landscapes, exploring how composers translate the natural world into sound. Copland’s Quiet City opens in hushed stillness, its solitary trumpet and English horn unfolding a spare, haunting dialogue that evokes empty streets at dusk and the quiet vastness beyond them. Intimate and searching, it captures the feeling of standing alone beneath an open sky. Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, “Titan,” expands that perspective to monumental scale, moving from pastoral dawn to storm-tossed intensity and, ultimately, blazing affirmation. Rustic dances, birdsong-like figures, and sweeping climaxes create a journey through nature’s serenity and power.