STEVES: Bonjour. I’m Rick Steves in Paris. You know, if you looked at the map of Europe 200 years ago, you’d hardly recognize it. It’s missing so many countries. Today, it’s a whole different map, but it didn’t just happen.

In the Romantic age, the 1800s, national struggles helped to shape my favorite continent. And I’m fascinated by how music from the same age played a role. It lifted patriotic spirits like a bugle call on the battlefield. Hmm, I wonder...

What if I could team up with a great orchestra, with a dynamic conductor in the heartland of America and weave in beautiful video images from across Europe to design a musical trip? Yes, a concert — a symphonic journey — where we’d visit seven countries musically, celebrate their national story with their greatest hits of the Romantic age and I could be the tour guide.

STEVES: Thank you. Thank you. I am thrilled to be here with all of you on the stage of Historic Music Hall in Cincinnati, Ohio. And we’re about to take together a symphonic journey all across Europe. Are you ready to travel?

AUDIENCE: Yes!

STEVES: Great, because conductor John Morris Russell and the Cincinnati Pops are about to take us to seven countries musically and I get to be your tour guide. And I’m really in a good mood because I get to mix three of my favorite things together: love of travel, history, and music, as with the help of vivid images and the beautiful music, we appreciate how the turmoil and triumphs of 19th-century Europe helped to shape the beautiful world that we live in today.

Our theme is Romanticism and nationalism, the isms of the 19th century. And one thing they had in common was a fundamental yearning for freedom. We all want to be free. We want to be free from foreign oppressors. We want to be free from kings and tyrants. And we want to be free as individuals to live creative and fulfilling lives. Well, the music we’ll hear is from the Romantic era, the 1800s. And by the way, this is not the giggly, kissy romantic era that you and I might remember from middle school. Okay. This is an artistic era that followed the cerebral, logical classical age. Romanticism was less about the head and more about the heart. It was a time when people embraced nature and they championed underdog national causes. It was an age of common people asserting themselves, grabbing the reins of power.

While this is a European tour, we’re starting in the United States, where we celebrate the accomplishments of the American Revolution, the world’s first great democratic revolution that helped inspire the flourishing of freedom in 19th-century Europe. America the Beautiful.

[music: America the Beautiful]