Original subtitles

Rick Steves has spent 100 days a year

for the last 30 years

exploring the wonders of Europe

and enjoying its diverse cultures.

The insights he's discovered and shared

have made him America's expert on European travel.

In this special, Rick starts back where he grew up --

the beautiful Pacific Northwest.

With its magnificent natural scenery,

Washington state is where his passion for Europe

meets his love of home.

Travelers know that wherever people live,

they're proud of their identity and their culture.

It was in this small community of Edmonds,

just north of Seattle,

where Rick's love affair with Europe began

and it was all because of music.

As the son of a piano importer,

he traveled with his family to the factories in Europe

and developed a passion for both travelling in

and teaching about Europe.

Tonight, Rick takes us on a musical journey

that starts at home and then meanders through Europe

by way of its most beloved music --

late 19th-century romantic favorites

that stir patriotic hearts across the continent.

In this program, we learn

that Americans and Europeans alike express pride

in their unique cultures and love for their homeland

through their music.

Join Rick Steves for...

Tonight's performance comes to you

from the Edmonds Center for the Arts

and is performed by the Cascade Symphony Orchestra

with conductor Michael Miropolsky.

[ Applause ]

Please welcome Rick Steves.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

This is my hometown orchestra,

and like community orchestras all over the United States,

it's a group of volunteer music lovers who come together

to bring live classical music to our neighborhoods.

Let's show our appreciation

to the Cascade Symphony Orchestra

and to community orchestras all over our country

for their contribution to the arts.

Tonight's program is a symphonic journey,

touching down in seven different countries,

and with the help of video and music,

we'll gain an appreciation for how 19th-century Europe

helped shape the beautiful world that we live in today.

The theme of the concert is romanticism and nationalism.

These were the 'isms' of the 19th century.

And something fundamental to both of these 'isms'

is that yearning for freedom.

We all want to be free, don't we?

We want to be free from external oppression,

we want be free from tyrants and kings,

and we want to be free to be individuals,

to live creative and fulfilling lives.

Nearly all the music we'll hear today

is from about the same generation,

from the late 1800s, from the Romantic Age,

and this music championed national causes

and it also supported this exciting notion

of common people finally taking the reins in their society.

Now, this is a tour of Europe,

but it's going to start in the United States.

That's because this next piece celebrates

the accomplishments of our revolution,

the first great democratic revolution,

which in so many ways inspired the flourishing of freedom

throughout 19-century Europe.

So let's rise now for our national anthem.

♪ O say, can you see

♪ By the dawn's early light

♪ What so proudly we hailed

♪ At the twilight's last gleaming ♪

♪ Whose broad stripes and bright stars ♪

♪ Through the perilous fight

♪ O'er the ramparts we watched

♪ Were so gallantly streaming?

♪ And the rocket's red glare

♪ The bombs bursting in air

♪ Gave proof through the night

♪ That our flag was still there ♪

♪ O say, does that

♪ Star-spangled

♪ Banner yet wave

♪ O'er the land of the free

♪ And the home

♪ Of the

♪ Brave? ♪

Listening to that, I enjoyed patriotic goose bumps,

and I imagine you did, too, and it's important to remember

that people all over the world enjoy a similar emotional kick

when they hear music that celebrates their culture.

In tonight's program, we'll be enjoying

romantic music from a time

when romantic music stoked the national pride

of countries all over Europe.

From Norway to Italy, from England to the Czech Republic.

We'll start in Austria with a Hapsburg waltz.

You know, the Hapsburgs were really the energy

and the elegance of the day.

And in the 1860s, it was the cultural peak of that empire

and the waltz was all the craze.

The Hapsburgs ruled a vast empire

and they were great patrons of the arts.

That's why Mozart and Beethoven and Strauss,

and all these great composers, went to Vienna

to create all that beautiful music.

Strauss was the heartthrob of the Romantic Age in Vienna.

With his violin, he could whip up the crowds into a frenzy

and he helped create that waltz craze.

This piece gives us the sense of the pride and the joy of Vienna.

It is by Johann Strauss, Jr., his number one hit of 1867,

"On the Beautiful Blue Danube."

For this next piece, we sail up the Danube into Germany.

You know, 150 years ago, Germany wasn't there.

It was a bunch of little German-speaking states

with a dream for German nationalism, for German unity.

And remember, in the 19th century,

all over Europe, national groups like this were coalescing

and romantic music supported them.

In 1871, that grab bag

of little German-speaking fiefdoms and dukedoms

finally became the Germany we know today.

And at that time, the romantic composer Richard Wagner

was in his prime.

Wagner was a political radical. He was a nonconformist.

An individual's individual.

Kind of the quintessential romantic.

And he's a reminder that romanticism was about more

than rising nations.

It was also championing personal freedoms and individualism.

This next piece is from an opera by Wagner,Die Meistersinger.

It's the story of a common man

overcoming the tyranny of tradition to win his lady love.

Up now, Wagner's overture toDie Meistersinger.

Next we hear a piece from the Czech Republic.

The 19th century was a time of national awakenings.

All over Europe, from Finland to Bulgaria,

little national groups were on the rise.

The Czechs were one of these and they struggled heroically,

surrounded by bigger neighbors --

Austrian Hapsburgs, Germans and Russians.

Now, romantic music championed both the causes of these people,

and it did it with art and it did it with music.

In the Romantic Age, for the Czech people,

Smetana was a favorite.

This piece is named for the most important river

in the Czech Republic.

It flows and it connects the culture like a thread.

And it also helped preserve the identity,

the culture and the language of the Czech people

amid those bigger neighbors.

The piece is like a landscape portrait,

and when you listen to the music,

you get caught up in the melody and you almost flow

through the forests, through the villages,

and finally into the capital city of Prague.

And at the same time, the music evokes

the persistent and the heroic struggle

of the Czech people.

To this day,

Czechs get a lump in their throat when they hear

Smetana's hauntingly beautiful melody, "The Moldau."

Our next piece is from Italy,

and it evokes the struggles of the Italian-speaking states

as they set their sights on independence.

Remember, before 1870, like Germany,

Italy was just a bunch of little states

surrounded by mightier states

that really didn't want to make room

for a new country on the map.

For Italian nationalists, romantic music served

as a bugle call on the battlefield,

and their favorite music was opera.

Melodramatic, bombastic, it just seemed to fit

a country that expresses itself with such emotion.

The very most popular

opera composer was Giuseppe Verdi.

His operas were the rage.

People would fill the opera houses.

They'd stand on their seats and together they'd sing

the dramatic Verdi arias,

as if raising their voices in unison for Italian statehood.

This next piece was written in 1871,

the same year that Italy was united.

It's from the Verdi operaAida.

While it's set in ancient Egypt,

when you listen to it, the pharaoh could almost be

a stand-in for the triumphant king of a newly united Italy.

Up next from Verdi'sAida, the "Triumphal March."

Next we travel to England.

This piece captures the grandeur of what was Europe's

first global superpower.

At the end of the 19th century, Queen Victoria

ruled a quarter of the planet.

Her empire was famously

the empire upon which the sun never set,

humming with newfangled inventions

from the Industrial Age,

with the middle-class that was educated,

prosperous, and on the rise.

This next piece is "Pomp and Circumstance"

by Sir Edward Elgar.

And it seems to provide a fitting sort of soundtrack

for the confidence that was Britain's

at the dawn of the 20th century.

We know this piece mostly because we use it

at commencement ceremonies to celebrate educational triumphs.

But if you happen to be ruling a grand empire,

or bushwhacking a brave new future for the common man,

this piece works for other triumphs as well.

Let's listen to the regal sounds

of Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance."

Next we travel north to Norway and a piece by Edvard Grieg.

In the 19th century, Norway was chafing

under the thumb of Sweden,

and you know Norwegians have a distinct need

to be Norwegian apart from Swede.

The cultural capital during this period was Bergen,

way out in the west in fjord country.

And the great writers and artists and musicians

gathered there to be inspired by the natural beauty.

Part of romanticism and a part of nationalism

is a love of nature,

and Norwegians seeking freedom found inspiration

in the awesome beauty of their homeland.

Grieg wrote this piece to accompany the play "Peer Gynt."

Peer Gynt was kind of a Norwegian Huck Finn

whose misadventures were set mostly in scenic Norway.

This piece evokes the beauty of Norwegian fjord country

and the pride Norwegians feel for their way of life

and for the beautiful corner of the world they call home.

Let's listen to "Morning" fromPeer Gynt

by Edvard Grieg from Norway.

No tour of Europe,

musical or otherwise, is complete

without a stop in France,

home of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution,

and, in a lot of ways, the birthplace of modern Europe.

In the 19th century, France already had its independence.

Its struggle was a domestic one

between the haves and the have-nots,

between royals and aristocrats and peasants,

between elites and commoners.

Through its revolutions -- and they had several --

the French led the call in Europe

for the end of the old regime notion of divine monarchs.

Until then, most people just accepted the notion

that some people were born ordained by God to be rulers

and the vast majority were born to be ruled.

The revolutionary slogan of the day was

"Liberty, equality and fraternity."

And this slogan inspired those who longed for freedom

all over romantic 19th-century Europe.

And when they sang that slogan,

it was more than just nation building,

it celebrated personal freedoms

and the notion of government by, for, and of the people.

This piece is typical

of 19th-century French romantic music,

and when we listen to it, we can almost hear the rabble

gathering in the streets

and chanting,"Liberté, égalité, fraternité,"

and, of course, "Vive la France!"

This is an opera by Berlioz written in the 1850s.

The "Trojan March."

[ Applause ]

Enjoying this music, I am reminded

that while every nation has its unique struggles,

one thing they all have in common

is that fundamental yearning for freedom.

And music can express and empower

that basic human emotion.

You know, in so many ways, the 19th century

laid the groundwork for the freedoms

that we enjoy today in the 21st century.

And that passion for freedom is still strong in Europe.

Of course the big news in our generation

is the gradual integration

of that long bickering continent into a peaceful union.

And while it's tough to get all those proud nations

to do anything at the same time,

their motto is "united in diversity."

And one thing they do very well together

is embrace the ideals of their anthem.

This last piece was conceived

in the revolutionary spirit of the 19th century

and set to a poem about universal brotherhood.

It's an anthem relevant today

as it was when Beethoven set pen to paper

calling all men to brotherhood

to celebrate freedom

and to be united joyfully in their diversity.

As we go to this last piece,

I would like to thank you all for joining us.

We hope you've enjoyed our symphonic journey.

Now let's finish with the official anthem

of the European Union, Beethoven's "Ode to Joy."

[ Applause ]

♪♪