The audience all sang as they left the building: a sure sign of a successful performance. Around 8:30 p.m. on Jan. 26, a packed house exited Bovard Auditorium, humming the first three measures of Strauss’ “The Blue Danube Waltz.”

Moments before, the USC Thornton Symphony had performed the piece as an encore, following a repertoire featuring works from both Johann Strauss II and Johannes Brahms. In the intermediary between performance and encore, conductor Hans Graf took a moment to explain the friendship between the two composers. It was in reference to this that the repertoire was formed: An overture by Strauss and a symphony by Brahms juxtaposed with one another to mimic the actual crossover of their lives in Viennese society.

Daily headlines, sent straight to your inbox.

Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up with the latest at and around USC.

Unity was a general theme of the evening — both historically and in terms of performance.

As the lights in Bovard Auditorium dimmed and the orchestra took their seats, Graf emerged onstage, took a slight bow and faced the orchestra. At the first lift of his baton, the musicians straightened, preparing themselves for his direction.

He released his hands, and the overpowering introductory chords of “Die Fledermaus Overture” immediately swelled throughout the entire auditorium.

The orchestra played with an electric vivacity, capturing the audience within the first measure of the music. The synchronization of the instruments was flawless, as well as the layering of melody and harmony.

As the violinists held the dominating melody, the rest of the strings balanced the dialogue of the music with speedy variations of the main theme. The percussions swiftly punctuated the moments of release in the melody and the winds accompanied the rapport of the strings. All these layers molded together to form a perpetual dialogue of energy and liveliness.

Beyond the harmonic component of the music, the emotional acuteness of the overture was exhibited through the lightness and softness in melodic passages.

The ability to synthesize a wide range of emotions in the music is a direct testament to the musical capabilities of each orchestra member, as well as the sharpness of Graf’s conducting.

Watching Graf conduct was another spectacle in addition to the music. As his right hand and right foot held the beat of the music, his left hand animatedly directed each section of the orchestra, building and diminishing the quality of sound with each movement of his fingertips. Seeing his direction and the immediate response of the orchestra made one thing clear: The conductor and orchestra were a singular organism during the performance.

The synthesis of director and orchestra was no more present than in the performance of Brahms’ “Symphony No. 2 in D Major.” The Symphony was performed in four parts: Allegro non troppo, Adagio non troppo, Allegretto grazioso and Allegro con spirito.

While partially due to its longer length, the Symphony demanded a far greater technical and emotional versatility than the Overture. In this piece, each group of instruments was highlighted by the strings, winds, brass and percussion all having principal parts.

Each section blended seamlessly, with the melodies of the strings giving way to the winds, and then unifying after each exposition. Throughout the entire symphony, the emotional ebb and flow was balanced between instrumental groups, yet each instrumental group maintained a clear distinction of its own purpose and sound.

As the orchestra resolved the “Allegro con spirito” movement of the Symphony with a unanimous forte and draw on the final chord, the entire audience erupted in applause. It was then that Graf took a bow onstage, walked off and then reemerged with an image projected above the stage of both Strauss and Brahms together in the mid-1800s.

Here, Graf began his oration about the camaraderie between the two musicians, indulging the audience in a small anecdote. In a small café, Brahms wrote the first five notes of a melody on a white fan and gifted it to Strauss’ wife. When she opened it, she read the opening notes to Strauss’ most famous piece: “The Blue Danube Waltz.” Brahms continued to tell her how he had wished to compose such a beautiful piece as her husband’s and congratulated the Danube’s success.

After this story, Graf turned to the orchestra, lifting his hands once more. As the first notes of the Waltz emerged with exacting precision and clarity, smiles and nods of recognition immediately plastered the faces of audience members.

The music, in its oscillation between gentleness and grandeur, emphasized the three-count beat of a waltz. Contextualized by Graf’s story, the piece held both emotional and historical significance, and one could imagine dancing on a fine summer night to the most famous waltz of all time, somewhere in a palace by the outskirts of Vienna.

The orchestra completed the final measures of the music in direct alignment with its balloon-like, bouncing manner. The audience roared with applause.

The lights went on and the orchestra took one final bow, forcing everyone back into reality after having spent an hour being transported to Viennese high society.

As the audience turned to climb the steps out of Bovard, hums of the waltz could be heard from all directions, some people still stepping to the three-count rhythm of the music. That is what unified the performance. Beyond the symbiotic conductor-orchestra relationship, the Thornton Symphony performed music that stayed with the audience, and together spectators and musicians alike floated out of the auditorium, still dancing an 1800s waltz in their minds.