Fabio Luisi conducts Bruch, Bruckner, and Nielsen — With Arabella Steinbacher

Fabio Luisi leads the Danish National Symphony Orchestra in an epic program that kicks off with a taste of Denmark’s musical tradition: Carl Nielsen’s sparkling Overture for Maskarade, the quintessential Danish opera. Next up is a masterpiece out of Germany, south of the Danish border, as virtuoso violinist Arabella Steinbacher deploys “a finely polished technique and a beautifully varied palette of timbres” (The New York Times) in a dazzling rendition of one of the most emblematic Romantic concertos: Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1, a lyrical and fiery perennial favorite that continues to delight audiences from the first notes.

The program heads south again to close out with Bruckner’s Second Symphony, reworked several times by the composer and heard here in its final version under the inspired baton of Maestro Luisi—who describes the Austrian as “one of [a] kind, always very sincere and true,” a composer with a unique quality who “really intrigues me and excites me every time I do one of his symphonies.”