The performance opens with Mozart’s Linz Symphony, widely regarded as one of his great mature symphonies. Dvořák was a gardener, and loved to roam the fields and woods surrounding his home in southern Bohemia. The tone of his Eighth Symphony is one of bucolic euphoria, the sheer joy of being alive in a world of natural wonders, filled with birdcalls and dance tunes. Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning "Lilacs" is based on Walt Whitman's poem “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd,” a poignant elegy to Abraham Lincoln.