Bamberg Symphony with Hélène Grimaud at Center for the Arts at George Mason University

The Bamberg Symphony—one of Germany’s premier orchestras—debuts at the Center for the Arts in a program inspired by New Yorker music critic and Pulitzer Prize finalist Alex Ross’s recent book Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music. It explores Richard Wagner’s complicated, many-sided legacy and his colossal influence on music, art, and culture as part of the ensemble’s concert series “The World After Wagner.” Maestro Jakub Hrša—renowned for his partnership with Bamberg Symphony as well as for his guest-conducting with orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra—leads a beautiful program featuring Wagner’s Prelude to Act I from Lohengrin and Overture to Tannhäuser. The program also features music by two of Wagner’s German contemporaries, Johannes Brahms and Robert Schumann; virtuoso pianist Hélène Grimaud, praised by The Washington Post for the “rapturous” and “astonishing show of her proficiency and poetic sensibilities,” joins the orchestra for Schumann’s dazzling piano concerto.