Kansas City Symphony: Matthias Pintscher & Joyce DiDonato - Mahler's Symphony No. 1

Kansas City Symphony: Matthias Pintscher & Joyce DiDonato - Mahler's Symphony No. 1 at Helzberg Hall - Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts

A funeral march that turns Frère Jacques upside down. A finale that turns toward triumph. Mahler's First Symphony makes room for the strange as well as the beautiful, and that unpredictability is a good reason to give it your Sunday afternoon.

Nature imagery, earthy dance and Czech folk-band color sit alongside the nursery tune transformed into a minor-key procession. These are pleasures with different personalities, not one stately mood stretched across a concert. If you like music with a sense of adventure, the First offers plenty to get caught up in before its big finish.

Joyce DiDonato brings a different focus to Mahler's Rückert-Lieder. Her performance of these intimate, introspective songs puts a solo voice at the center of the program. For admirers of expressive singing, that is an attraction in its own right, rather than merely a prelude to the symphony.

Matthias Pintscher also conducts Olga Neuwirth's Dreydl in this Kansas City Symphony Classical Series finale. The season-ending occasion is a chance to make plans around both a favorite singer and a composer whose imagination refuses to stay in one place. You can look forward to one and arrive curious about the other.

Find tickets for June 6 at Helzberg Hall in Kansas City, Missouri, and make an afternoon of DiDonato's voice and Mahler's daring.