- [Announcer] Funding for this program has been provided by: the FS Foundation, bringing together adults of all abilities and backgrounds as they pursue passion, prosperity and purpose; Linda & Alvaro Pascotto; The Carol Franc Buck Foundation.

Additional support provided by these funders.

(gentle classical music) (intense classical music) - You know, a lot of people hold classical composers as this kind of reverent beings that we kind of just, you know, museum, temples, you know, all of these things, but these are all human beings with personalities.

And so all of their pieces have not only kind of, you know, they can have dark emotions, but they can also just be really light and funny and quirky.

The Beethoven 3rd Piano Concerto, Gilles Vonsattel is playing solo.

And he's an incredible soloist, but he also understands kind of what the music is really trying to say, and even if it's cheeky rather than kind of reverent.

- We think of Beethoven, you know, as this kind of angry or just very intense person that, you know, used to destroy the pianos, you know, that he was playing on.

And there are so many elements of humor in a lot of his music.

- Sometimes his music was controversial for exhibiting eccentric tastes.

- He had a very broad and kind of rugged sense of humor, and he liked to make fun, and we don't hear the humor because we're not really listening for it.

So it has to kind of be pointed out.

- You know, like there's even spots in the piece that are designed to make the orchestra come in wrong.

And that's to him very funny to make people sort of look silly on stage.

There's all kinds of examples of that.

- Here's a minuet, but go try to dance to this minuet.

It's not going to work.

And that is completely intentional.

- He would also write music for amateur pianists.

That was way too difficult for them, you know, so they would look bad and he would look good, you know?

So there's all kinds of stuff like that littered around, and you learn to really recognize it.

It's almost like you're hanging out with somebody and you know they have a particular kind of side of their personality that you're like, "Yep, there it is again."

- The second movement, which is my favorite, starts out with a really, really long, beautiful, almost timeless solo for the piano.

You don't know where the beat is.

You don't know where you are, and it feels very ethereal.

And then the orchestra comes in in a very sort of sweeping motion that's really, really beautiful.

And then the last movement is just incredibly intense and incredibly live, just like zaniness, I mean, just things that are meant to be funny.

And it's nice when you can kind of bring that out in a unique way that's a little bit more fresh and improvisatory.

(audience applauding) - How perfect to be listening to music in the kind of environment that many of these composers were in when they composed.

- When I see the stage and its integration in that area with the trees and the sky and the colors around, and also the air here, which is so special.

There's just something about the air when I get to this part of the world that just feel really good.

- Beethoven always tried to get out of the city.

He was staying with his brother and he looked over the Danube every day.

So big water, forests, hikes, walking, it's all part of the compositional process.

- There's something about hearing a certain kind of music that was intended to invoke forests, mountains, water, streams, nature, something just really deeply satisfying.

I'm gonna play a little piece by Claude Debussy.

And the whole piece is basically trying to capture the motion of fish, which after all is incredibly capricious and easy and just so agile.

So it's a little piece that closes his second book of "Images."

Here is "Goldfish" by Claude Debussy.

(audience applauding) Schumann's 3rd Symphony, the Rhenish symphony, is unusual in that it's five movements.

The unique thing about the Schumann Symphony is the fourth movement.

It begins with a beautiful trombone chorale.

- So, the trombones in that symphony, they wait, wait, wait the first couple of movements.

And then they come in cold with this high-touchy soft thing that sounds like an organ.

- It's totally unusual, because it's not something you'd hear in a symphony, not something you'd ever expect in a symphony.

You expect four movements and that's it.

And he added this sort of thing in the middle to kind of give you a pause and give you something to kind of be reverent about before he begins the kind of more Pastoral-like last movement.

- It's so fun playing Schumann with one of my college mates, David Garcia, he's a trombonist.

You know, we're both graduates at UT Austin, and like just sharing the stage with him was really nice, and hearing him come in and nail this really difficult trombone part.

He played it and it just sounds so awesome.

- Very unusual, but it's really cool.

I think it's very cool.

The trombones love playing it because it's just kind of beautiful, you know, long lines, not just kind of bombastic, which is what we usually associate trombones with.

So every piece has something unique, something different.

And I think the audience...

I mean, you don't even have to know any of what I just said, you could just sit there and enjoy it and take it for what it is.

(audience applauding) - [Announcer] Funding for this program has been provided by: the FS Foundation, bringing together adults of all abilities and backgrounds as they pursue passion, prosperity and purpose; Linda & Alvaro Pascotto; The Carol Franc Buck Foundation.

Additional support provided by these funders.