Uniting Communities Through Extraordinary Music

Brahms! Few composers represent the epitome of the European classical music tradition like Johannes Brahms. Closing SPM’s 41st season is the composer’s alluring and textured Symphony No. 3. The work opens with a statement of the notes F-Ab-F, representing Brahms’ personal motto “free but happy (frei aber froh),” which sums up both its spirit and emotion. The composer’s most subtle symphonic work, the listener is drawn into Brahms’ expressive world where in his own words he “speaks through his music.” Brahms’ influence on his contemporaries and future generations of composers cannot be overestimated, and the two other works on this program are highly representative of this legacy. Zemlinsky’s overture, in a more a contemporary language, remains romantic in musical expression as does the intriguing and heartfelt Seven Early Songs of Alban Berg. SPM is privileged to present as soprano soloist in Berg’s work, the internationally acclaimed vocal artist, Jennifer Johnson Cano, who’s voice was declared by the Boston Globe to be “radiant and intense, rich in the lower part of her range, bright and precise at the top, with… an uncanny ability to embody the character of each work”