Classical Events

Award-winning composer Dorothy Chang wrote her inspirational and bright Northern Star as part of a larger collection of commissions from several Canadian composers in 2017. New Jersey Symphony Music Director Xian Zhang performed it for the first time in Vancouver in 2018.

Michelle Cann makes a triumphant return to the Symphony stage for the first time since 2014 with Strauss’ light, virtuosic and witty Burleske for Piano and Orchestra.

Brahms’ final symphony balances autumnal hues with virtuosic power. Scaling the heights of this monumental work is an orchestral and emotional feat of Mount Everest proportions—and one musicians relish playing.

The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival will share dynamic contemporary poets offering dramatic readings between the orchestral works during the performances at NJPAC in Newark.

The powerful and expressive Egmont Overture distills all of Beethoven’s musical hallmarks—storminess, heroism, triumph—into eight minutes. In 1956, this stirring piece helped inspire a nationwide uprising against the Marxist-Leninist government of the Hungarian People’s Republic.

American classical pianist Richard Goode is recognized worldwide for the special touch and insight he brings to Mozart. Hear his effortless artistry in this most regal of Mozart’s concertos.

Former New Jersey Symphony Music Director Hugh Wolff returns to a work he premiered with the Symphony back in 1992. Kernis wrote this symphony to express his complex views on the just-beginning Persian Gulf War.

La valse is one Ravel’s most intense and colorful works; originally composed as a series of waltzes for the piano, it is now most often heard as an orchestral piece. The work encapsulates in music the horrifying destruction faced by turn-of-the-century Europe on the eve of World War I.

Coleridge-Taylor was a great, yet historically overlooked composer. This early work for orchestra showcases aching melodies and rhythmic drive. Don't miss Xian and your New Jersey Symphony bringing this gem of the romantic era to life.

Grammy Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn, who last graced our stages in 2014, accentuates all the brilliant colors and shades of melancholy in Sibelius’ only violin concerto.

Lively and powerful, the Fifth Symphony was influenced by Prokofiev’s own admiration for the splendor of the human spirt and a hopefulness for a brighter future towards the end of World War II.

Eh, what’s opera, Doc? The catchy melodies and familiar notes of this overture set the table perfectly for Rossini’s iconic comedic opera.

The New Jersey Symphony’s own Darryl Kubian delivers on a commission that highlights his Symphony colleagues Chris Komer, Garth Greenup and Na-Young Baek on horn, trumpet and cello. Just another glowing example of the star power from within your orchestra.

Written in 1880, the Gran Duo Concertante highlights the bass and violin during one extended and virtuosic movement. Principal Bass Ha Young Jung joins Concertmaster Eric Wyrick for this thrilling showpiece.

The play may have been a failure, but Bizet’s arrangements of selections from L'Arlésienne have endured as two of the most popular concert suites in the classical canon.

Written during the horrors World War I, Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin is a bright reflection on lives lost during the war, with each movement dedicated to a friend who passed. The composer draws on the woodwind section—particularly the oboe—to tell these stories.

George Walker—a longtime Montclair resident—was among the greatest composers to call the Garden State home, and in 1996, he became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music. It was this passionate work for soprano and orchestra that garnered him that grand distinction.

This divine choral-orchestral masterpiece focuses Fauré’s view on the acceptance of a peaceful death. Past Music Director Jacques Lacombe, whose tenure was marked by powerful vocal performances, returns to lead this exquisite work.