#orchestral-music

#orchestral-music

On a blustery evening in October, Daniel Foster sat onstage at the Kennedy Center, viola in his lap. The National Symphony Orchestra was about to play "Don Juan," an 1889 tone poem by Richard Strauss about a young libertine in search of the ideal woman. The opening is fiendishly tricky for viola. It has a fast and technical harmonic line that's musically demanding and strange. Thirty years ago, in his audition to be the NSO's principal violist, Foster played that excerpt. He won the job.

John Towner Williams had music in his bones from an early age - and as a new biography reveals, a chance encounter with legendary director Steven Spielberg soon led to some of the most iconic film scores of modern times Imagine a crowded beach in Amity, a boy on a lilo, a fin coming, and no da-dum. Or Superman taking off in an aural vacuum.

The concert opens with Canadian composer Samy Moussa's ethereal Elysium, for which the concert is named. Then, instead of a traditional single concerto, cellist Gabriel Cabezas joins the orchestra for two shorter pieces.