Join us on Friday, January 9, departing from the front commons at 6:30 pm for Masterworks: “Alpine Symphony”

Carl St.Clair, longtime Music Director of the Pacific Symphony, returns to conduct the Charleston Symphony for a program of remarkable music from two of Germany’s late Romantic-era composers. Guest soloist Aubree Oliverson performs Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1, a favorite that demands and demonstrates a soloist’s skillfulness. Hearing Strauss’s “Alpine Symphony” live is not an opportunity you want to miss.

The “Alpine Symphony” is a grand work of art that requires 140 different instruments with a sizable orchestra, and because of its challenges, it is not often performed. Though the prerequisites are rigorous, they are worth it. It calls for so much to recreate the scene Strauss envisioned: a single day’s journey on foot in the Alps from pre-dawn to nighttime, along the way experiencing all the sounds one might encounter. It’s a true celebration of nature enrapturing the human spirit — sometimes startling and thunderous, sometimes blissfully quiet, but always fascinating and unrestrained.