La Salle's playing inspired the Washington Post to write, "For much of the concert, the audience had to remember to breathe... the exhilaration didn't let up for a second until her hands came off the keyboard." Ravel's brilliant and jazzy Piano Concerto in G is one of her signature works. Starting with a distinctive percussive whip crack, this lighthearted piece has a meltingly poignant and serene slow movement. It wasn't easy to write, however. "That flowing phrase!" Ravel apparently commented. "How I worked over it bar by bar! It nearly killed me!" In the thrilling finale, you may imagine the piano is trying to outrace the orchestra.

At the top of the score of Carl Nielsen's Fourth symphony, he wrote: "Music is life, and like it, inextinguishable." In 1914, Nielsen was estranged from his wife, having had an affair with their nanny. (They reconciled eight years later.). Against the backdrop of the First World War, he wrote to her, "I have an idea for a new composition, which has no program but will express what we understand by the spirit of life or manifestations of life, that is: everything that moves, that wants to live … just life and motion, though varied — very varied — yet connected, and as if constantly on the move, in one big movement or stream. I must have a word or a short title to express this; that will be enough. I cannot quite explain what I want, but what I want is good." He completed the work two years later. It begins with a burst of seemingly uncontainable demonic energy which eventually gives way to a calmer statement by the winds. The Brahmsian second movement serves as an intermezzo before the expansive, lyrical slow movement. The finale starts with exuberance which is interrupted by a ferocious battle between two pairs of timpani, eventually giving way to a grand and powerful conclusion.

The concert opens with Gabriella Smith's Tumblebird Contrails, which the composer said was "inspired by a single moment I experienced while backpacking in Point Reyes, sitting in the sand at the edge of the ocean, listening to the hallucinatory sounds of the Pacific (the keening gulls, pounding surf, rush of approaching waves, sizzle of sand and sea foam in receding tides), the constant ebb and flow of pitch to pitchless, tune to texture, grooving to free-flowing, watching a pair of ravens playing in the wind, rolling, swooping, diving, soaring — imagining the ecstasy of wind in the wings — jet trails painting never-ending streaks across the sky. The title, Tumblebird Contrails, is a Kerouac-inspired, nonsense phrase I invented to evoke the sound and feeling of the piece."

Experience the thrilling virtuosity of Lise de la Salle — and two sets of battling timpani!

Please note these are working rehearsals and pieces may not be played fully, piece order may change, and soloists may not sing or play as fully as in performance. Also note the conductor is not mic'ed to allow the musicians to work together more freely.