ABOUT THE PROGRAM
“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.
Featured Photo by John Fielder
This year, the NRO is proud to partner with local photographers whose work embodies the theme “American Adventures.” John Fielder was a celebrated Colorado photographer and conservationist whose expansive body of work captured the state’s wild landscapes and helped protect thousands of acres of open space. An avid supporter of the National Repertory Orchestra, he believed deeply in the power of the arts to inspire community.