the FS Foundation, PBS Reno, RenoTahoe, The University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe, The Carol Frank Buck Foundation, Linda and Alvaro Pascotto, Dick and Charlotte McConnell, Ian Weiss.

♪♪♪ Classical Tahoe is a festival in Incline Village, Nevada that happens every year for three weeks.

We're all from different orchestras with different styles, and we come together.

There are musicians here from San Francisco, LA, Saint Louis, Pittsburgh, all over the country.

It's like an all star team.

This is an inspirational place to be.

And, getting to work with this incredible orchestra.

So, so enjoyable.

♪♪♪ The feeling is so friendly, so open and so relaxed.

Its a beautiful place to play music.

And I think the interaction between the audience members and the musicians really makes it what it is, makes it very special.

We can seat a little bit short of 400 people in our outdoor venue here.

It's a small, intimate space, it almost feels like the audience members are on stage with you.

The people that come to support us and listen to our concerts are intensely, addicted to what we do.

And they show us that love all the time.

I've made friends in the audience and it's sort of like my summer family now.

Thanks to our relationship with PBS, we've been able to bring these concerts to all over the United States The increased visibility that that brings and the reach that we have as an organization, really, expands what we're able to do.

And it's very inspiring to those of us on stage Making music anywhere is spectacular.

Here in Tahoe, getting to wake up.

Smell the pine trees.

When Vivaldi is writing in his score.

You know, the summer and his Four Seasons.

Wonderful, unique situation where you can bring so many great musicians together and have these fantastic concerts, working with great conductors, and soloists.

Every year the orchestra gets stronger and the music making gets more beautiful.

♪♪♪ [Applause] Today's program features music by Brahms, Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Florence Price.

[Applause] ♪♪♪ Brahms wrote his fourth Symphony at the end of his life.

It was his last symphony.

And it is really somebody at the end of his life looking back and making peace with things.

♪♪♪ With Brahms, and a lot of German music, I find it's often that there is a melancholy or the sadness is not, is not so blatantly out there like with some other composers, like Russian or Italian composers.

But it's more, Its sometimes you almost get the feeling of the world is beautiful, and Im sad.

That kind of a more nuanced approach.

♪♪♪ Its very deep and very powerful I think the harmonies in Brahms are special, and he really showcases the low strings and in driving a lot of the the beautiful melodies that are playing on top.

There's a lot of intricacies between the high strings and the low strings at the same time.

So you can really choose as an audience member what to listen to.

♪♪♪ It's so inspiring, every note of it.

It's an absolute masterpiece.

It's actually pretty dark and tragic, which is, at this point in history, not inappropriate.

I think people here will really love it.

And I think that this orchestras really going to dig into it.

♪♪♪ I get to sing arias with this incredible orchestra.

One is a piece by Mozart called Venga Pur, and it's a kind of rage aria in which this megalomaniac is talking about his father, who was king.

And does he want to be like that?

And how can he beat him?

So there's there's rage, there's pathos, there's self-doubt, there's all these emotions you go through.

What's fascinating to me about this Mozart aria is that he was 16 when he wrote it.

but you hear all the seeds of Mozart's brilliance and you hear some impetuous, childish kind of, gestures, like the whole aria ends bap dah ba.

and it feels like Mozart was just going bap dah ba like any teenager would today.

it's a fun ending.

♪♪♪ ♪ [Singing in Italian] ♪♪♪ [Applause] As an encore, I'm singing a duet with myself.

people always ask me, I know you're a countertenor, and I don't really know what that means, but what's your real voice?

well, this is my real voice.

I'm singing in an authentic way that feels true to me.

But I know what they're asking.

They're asking if you sang like a man, what would it sound like?

And so I started to think, oh, gosh, you know, I speak kind of like a tenor, but where can I sing and feel more like a baritone when I sing?

And do I enjoy singing as a baritone, or do I prefer singing high?

And then I thought, why?

Why do I have to choose?

Why don't I just do both?

this duet was the first time I ever tried to do that publicly.

I sing both the Count and Susanna in a duet from the Marriage of Figaro, in which they go back and forth and, I managed to cover most everything.

♪♪♪ ♪ [Singing in Italian] ♪♪♪ [Applause] ♪♪♪ The Mendelssohn third is a piece full of, excitement and effervescence.

I think, like so much of Mendelssohn's music.

♪♪♪ Mendelssohn's one of the fast ones.

It's fast, but pretty sure this orchestra can handle it.

♪♪♪ It's challenging for the winds.

The second movement is this, vivace movement with so much, technically difficult music to play.

The opening of the second movement reminds me of a sailor song.

It starts out with a six measure introduction, and then the clarinet comes in with this very happy melody, [Singing] And its just, yeah, it's very happy.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Florence Price's first symphony.

So Florence Price is a name that people are beginning to know more about now today.

She forged a path, a remarkable path as a lady, black lady.

Early 20th century, in the US.

That's not easy.

Obviously she was overlooked, simply because of her gender and her, skin color.

Im really glad that we're kind of digging up all of her music again.

♪♪♪ And this is her first symphony, and you feel her searching for things.

She's writing the orchestra parts, Theres a very dramatic feel to it.

The second movement is built on a big brass chorale.

it has a very religious feel to it.

♪♪♪ This chorale that repeats a number of times with very little variation.

We really hear this music for, for a while.

The third movement is a Juba.

[Singing] ♪♪♪ The percussion and timpani playing is unique in some of the rhythmic ways that she uses the instruments.

It's also drawing on, African instruments that are introduced, to be played, Especially in the third movement it's an African dance, and she writes for African drum.

and then how that adds to the orchestra.

♪♪♪ And then the last movement is very fast, presto.

Then at the end its prestissimo.

This sort of whirlwind.

It's like a whirling dervish.

♪♪♪ It's full of life, it's full of color, it's full of optimism.

It's full also of resonances of obviously what she's been through.

There's all sorts of stuff going on.

It's wonderful and, it's thrilling.

♪♪♪ [Applause] ♪♪♪ Funding for this program has been provided by the FS Foundation, PBS Reno, RenoTahoe, The University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe, The Carol Frank Buck Foundation, Linda and Alvaro Pascotto, Dick and Charlotte McConnell, Ian Weiss.