Marin Alsop on Music

Marin Alsop and John Adams at a performance of Adams' Dr. Atomic at the Cabrillo Festival in 2008. Cabrillo Festival hide caption

Serge Rachmaninoff, photographed in 1919, somewhere outside of San Francisco. Wikimedia Commons hide caption

From a 2012 New York Philharmonic production of Candide, Marin Alsop conducts a cast that includes (from right) Kristin Chenoweth, Jeff Blumenkrantz, Paul Groves and Janine LaManna. Randy Brooke/WireImage hide caption

Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich's once brilliant career took a dive after the official party paper criticized one of his operas in 1936. Shostakovich responded with his powerful Fifth Symphony. Central Press/Getty Images hide caption

Alexander Scriabin originally set out to write a piece called "Orgiastic Poem," centered on physical ecstasy, but later decided to alter the title to something more ambiguous. Hulton Archive/Getty Images hide caption

Titania awakes clinging rapturously to Bottom, still wearing the donkey's head, in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Mendelssohn wrote music for a production of the play in 1843. Henry Fuseli/Getty Images hide caption

Gustav Mahler wanted each of his symphonies to contain a world of emotions and ideas. Library of Congress hide caption

Benjamin Britten takes a cup of tea during rehearsals for his War Requiem at Coventry Cathedral, in Coventry, England in May, 1962. Erich Auerbach/Getty Images hide caption

Leonard Bernstein's Age of Anxiety symphony is as unconventional as its creator. Courtesy of Library of Congress hide caption

Rudolph Cronau's drawing of Wagner's opera house, Bayreuth, flanked by his birthplace (left) and place of death. Wikimedia Commons hide caption

Stride piano pioneer James P. Johnson had dreams of becoming a successful symphonic composer. William Gottlieb hide caption

The traditional Jewish Kaddish prayer gets turned on its head in Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No. 3. Fethi Belaid/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

Sergei Prokofiev (pictured) wrote a Fifth Symphony that has special resonance in Sao Paulo for conductor Marin Alsop. Library of Congress hide caption

British composer Edward Elgar, seated at his desk at Severn House in Hampstead. His Symphony No. 1 was hailed as the best British symphony ever when it debuted in 1908. Reginald Haines/Getty Images hide caption

Richard Strauss' iconic opening to Also Sprach Zarathustra evokes a sense of vastness and power, Marin Alsop says. Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images hide caption