At a glance

Columbus Symphony Ohio Theatre, 39 E. State St. 614-469-0939; 1-800-7453000, www.ticketmaster.com 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday $10 to $70 including passing beside a brook or weathering a thunderstorm.

“It requires enormous forces onstage,” he added. “We will have a large percussion and brass section that will certainly be used to depict powerful moments in the storm.”

Despite the music’s clarity, audience members who would like a visual reference can direct their attention to a “photo essay” that will be projected above the stage during the performance.

The essay includes images of mountains and other settings related to Strauss captured by Columbus photographer Stephen Pariser.

“We need to make classical music relevant to today’s audience, and they’re a more visual audience,” Pariser said. “If we can do it to enhance it, but not to take away from it, that’s a great joy.”

This weekend’s concerts are part of a season-long look at nature in music. In October, the symphony will perform Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Pastoral Symphony”; and in April, Claude Debussy’s “La Mer” (“The Sea”).

Most of the music is from an era in which composers explicitly evoked the natural world.

“You could go back to some baroque music that has a chicken clucking,” said Frankel, who praises the “moving, majestic way that someone like Strauss is able to just take your breath away, the way your breath would be taken away by looking at, for example, the Alps.”