ASO Masterworks: Seven

Daniel Cho leads the Alabama Symphony Orchestra in a program unified — perhaps not so subtly — by the number seven. The evening opens with Arturo Márquez’s Danzón No. 7, a propulsive, dance-driven work rooted in Cuban and Mexican traditions. Mahler’s Blumine follows — a tender, rarely heard movement originally intended for his First Symphony and restored to concert life in the 1960s. Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite transforms familiar fairy tales into shimmering orchestral color. Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony closes the program in a blaze of rhythmic energy; Wagner famously called it the “apotheosis of the dance,” and it remains one of the most viscerally exciting works in the orchestral canon.