Don Quixote 

One of Eastman School of Music’s first directors, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Howard Hanson was renowned for his gorgeously orchestrated and richly textured works. Written in 1930, Hanson’s Second Symphony was immediately hailed as a triumph and “the epitome of the twentieth-century symphony.” The second half of the program features Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote. Composed in 1897, this tone poem, based on Miguel de Cervantes’s novel of the same name, implements varied orchestra instruments to represent the novel’s themes of knightly glory and a colorful array of amusing characters.