For 25 years, Rick Steves has shared his passion for touring Europe’s landmarks, culture, art, food and history with public television viewers on his Rick Steves’ Europe series.
Now he’s sharing his love of classical music on a national television special filmed in Cincinnati by WCET-TV last year.
Rick Steves’ Europe: A Symphonic Journey, taped last September with conductor John Morris Russell’s Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, wonderfully mixes 19th century classical music from seven European nations with video from Steves’ popular TV show. It airs 8 p.m. Thursday, April 3, on WCET-TV (Channel 48) and Dayton’s WPTD-TV (Channel 16).
“In the Romantic Age, the 1800s, national struggles helped to shape my favorite continent. And I’m fascinated how music from the same age played a role. It lifted patriotic spirits like a bugle call on the battlefield,” Steves says in the show open taped last year in Paris before the Sept. 13-15 Pops concerts.
“What if I could team up with a great orchestra, with a dynamic conductor, in the heartland of America, and weave in beautiful images from across Europe and design a musical trip — yes, a concert, a symphonic journey — where we’d visit seven countries and celebrate their national story?”
Steves is next seen getting off the Cincinnati streetcar on Elm Street while wearing his trademark backpack. Russell greets him on the Music Hall steps.
What follows is 57 minutes filled with the Pops performing 10 music selections from Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, Great Britain, Italy, Norway, France and the United States.
Each musical selection is combined with a video montage from that country’s cathedrals, castles, museums, mountains, rivers, sidewalk cafes, streetscapes, vineyards, food, wine and beer.
Lots of food, wine and beer.
“I’m in a good mood,” he tells the Music Hall audience, “because I get to mix three of my favorite things together — love of travel, history and music.”
A Symphonic Journey is an extension of the Rick Steves’ brand, which includes public TV and radio series; guidebook series; online forums and a website; small-group tours; travel bags and other merchandise; syndicated newspaper columns; and the Rick Steves’ Audio Europe cell phone app. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when he couldn’t travel internationally, he produced a six-part Art of Europe series from his extensive video archives. He has done Symphonic Journeys with various orchestras for more than a decade, including in Louisville, Kentucky. The WCET-TV production is an update of a 2013 show that Steves did in his hometown of Edmonds, Washington.
So far, 336 public TV stations have indicated they could air A Symphonic Journey from American Public Television, which distributes Steves’ TV series. The show became available Tuesday, April 1.
Steves, 69, the son of a high school band director and a piano technician, had been talking with Russell for more than a year about A Symphonic Journey, says Colin Scianamblo, chief content officer for WCET-TV and Dayton’s WPTD-TV and executive producer of the show with Mark Lammers, the stations’ local content director. Steves did speaking appearances in Cincinnati and Dayton for the stations in November 2023.
Steves and Russell “both agreed CET was the perfect choice to co-produce the show,” Scianamblo says. Two months later, in January last year, Steves contacted WCET-TV.
Nine months later, Steves’ three Pops performances were recorded by WCET-TV with a 25-person crew, 18 cameras and the Pops’ Music Hall support team.
The musical tour includes:
- Austria (“Emperor Waltz” by Johann Strauss II)
- Germany (“Lohengrin Prelude” by Richard Wagner)
- The Czech Republic (“The Moldau”/”Vltava” by Bedrich Smetana)
- Great Britain (“Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1” by Edward Elgar)
- Italy (“Nabucco” overture by Giuseppe Verdi)
- Norway (“Morning Mood” from “Peer Gynt” by Edvard Grieg)
- France (“Marche Militaire Francaise” by Camille Saint-Saens)
- The European Union (“Ode to Joy” by Ludwig Van Beethoven)
The Pops opens and closes with two United States’ selections, “America the Beautiful” by Katharine Lee Bates, and “Stars and Stripes Forever” by John Philip Sousa.
Steves introduces each song, and conducts the Sousa finale.
“For Italian patriots, the arias by Giuseppe Verdi stirred nationalist spirits, like a bugle call on the battlefield. When a Verdi opera came to town, people packed the house,” Steves says.
Four local producers had “the monumental task of logging potential video from dozens of Rick Steves’ Europe shows, including 19 episodes about Italy and 12 episodes from France, Scianamblo says. Steves also contributed suggestions for the estimated 200-plus clips pulled from nearly 50 shows for A Symphonic Journey, Scianamblo says.
“We used all the Europe episodes we could get our hands on,” he says. Editors Michael Seppelt, Jason Wilson and David Klingerman pieced together the show. It was “all hands on deck due to the tight turnaround” to finish the show for national distribution in six months, Scianamblo says.
For the Cincinnati Pops, the Steves’ collaboration provides the first return to national TV since a series of holiday concert broadcasts with conductor Erich Kunzel in the 1990s.
“This was a true partnership with some amazingly talented and creative people involved on all sides,” Scianamblo says.
On the air
Rick Steves’ Europe: A Symphonic Journey airs 8 p.m. Thursday, April 3, on WCET-TV (Channel 48) and Dayton’s WPTD-TV (Channel 16). The entire show also is posted on the PBS website here.
Travel with Rick Steves, his public radio series, airs at 3 p.m. Sunday on WVXU-FM (91.7) and WMUB-FM (88.5).
