Classical Favorites: Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and More!
2025–26 Season Preview Concert
Gregory D. McDaniel conductor
New Jersey Symphony
Enjoy a delightful summer evening of orchestral favorites featuring works from Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Ludwig van Beethoven and more! Conducted by New Jersey Symphony Colton Conducting Fellow Gregory D. McDaniel, this preview of the 2025–26 season delivers a lineup of beloved works you won’t want to miss!
New Scores: The Cone Composition Institute Concert
Part of the Edward T. Cone Composition Institute
Christopher Rountree conductor
Steven Mackey institute director and host
New Jersey Symphony
Witness the future of classical music in-the-making as the New Jersey Symphony performs works by four emerging composers selected for the Edward T. Cone Composition Institute. Institute Director Steven Mackey hosts the culminating concert, as Christopher Rountree takes the podium.
- Max Eidinoff Kairosclerosis
- Hannah Ishizaki Fractured Transformations
- Claire Cope Agita
- Nicole Knorr as the garden bows
- Steven Mackey Tonic
Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1
Opening Weekend | New Jersey Symphony Classical
Xian Zhang conductor
Joyce Yang piano
New Jersey Symphony
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Jessie Montgomery Hymn for Everyone
We launch the season with Montgomery’s open-arms musical welcome. In her Hymn for Everyone you’ll hear an echo of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” often called the Black National Anthem.
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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1
Slammed as a flop at its premiere, Tchaikovsky more than had the last laugh: here’s jaw-dropping virtuosity for the soloist, sweeping melodies for the orchestra, and an audience favorite around the world.
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Antonín Dvořák Symphony No. 8
Dvořák’s pen might as well have been a paint brush. In his tuneful Eighth you can practically see autumn’s most vivid colors and the heart-melting glow of an October sunset.
Rhapsody in Blue
Plus works by Florence Price & Carlos Simon!
Tito Muñoz conductor
Michelle Cann piano
New Jersey Symphony
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Florence Price Piano Concerto in One Movement
An American genius, Florence Price mixes luscious lyricism with ragtime stomp. This recently unearthed gem won Cann—the leading interpreter of Price’s piano music—a 2023 GRAMMY.
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George Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue
United Airlines knows a good tune when it hears one, and that melody is the heartbeat of Gershwin’s classic. But not before the famous swooping clarinet solo gets this piece of the Roaring Twenties underway.
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Carlos Simon Zodiac (Northeast Premiere, New Jersey Symphony Co-Commission)
Carlos Simon is one of America’s leading contemporary composers, and in his latest music, a proud co-commission of the New Jersey Symphony, Simon gives voice to all 12 zodiac signs—the music at turns fiery, ethereal, and soaring.
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Aaron Copland Suite from Billy the Kid
Cowboy songs, folk tunes, and a visionary composer—all the ingredients that made Copland’s wild-west ballet a hit in the ‘30s and a favorite still.
Randall Goosby Returns
New Jersey Symphony Classical
Xian Zhang conductor
Randall Goosby violin
New Jersey Symphony
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Jean Sibelius Finlandia
Eight minutes that saved a nation. When Finland wrestled itself free from the Russian bear, Sibelius’ music was the Finns’ call to courage.
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Samuel Barber Violin Concerto
The most gorgeous violin concerto of the 20th century: the first two movements exquisitely touching, and the third a wild sprint for only the bravest of soloists.
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Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 2, “Ukrainian”
Three Ukrainian folksongs were all Tchaikovsky needed for inspiration. From them, he spun his most joyful symphony.
Romeo & Juliet
Featuring The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey
Xian Zhang conductor
The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey
New Jersey Symphony
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Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture
Tchaikovsky gives you all the passion and drama of Shakespeare’s two young lovers, as the New Jersey Symphony becomes a storyteller in real time.
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Sergei Prokofiev Selections from Romeo and Juliet
Considered too difficult, even undanceable at its unveiling, Prokofiev’s ballet with scene after scene of strikingly original music soon became the treasure of every ballet house the world over.
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony
Time for Three Performs Contact
Markus Stenz conductor
Time for Three
Ranaan Meyer double bass | Nick Kendall violin | Charles Yang violin
New Jersey Symphony
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Richard Wagner Prelude to Act I of Lohengrin
It begins with the strings alone playing a whisperquiet passage of holy serenity. Soon the whole orchestra joins and builds in a full-throated cry. Wagner’s operatic stage is set for the arrival of the knight Lohengrin sent on a mission from God.
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Kevin Puts Contact
Time for Three, a self-described “classically trained garage band,” brings you the GRAMMY Award-winning concerto written for them by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts. Created during the isolation of the early pandemic, Contact is “an expression of yearning for the fundamental need” of human connection.
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Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 5
Four notes—dah, dah, dah, DAH—launched Beethoven’s Fifth in 1808 and have stamped all of western classical music since.
Bartók’s Concerto
for Orchestra
New Jersey Symphony Classical
Ruth Reinhardt conductor
Eva Gevorgyan piano
New Jersey Symphony
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Béla Bartók Romanian Folk Dances
Informed by his numerous research trips across Hungary, this short and spry set of folk dances bursts with Transylvanian flavor and energy.
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Frédéric Chopin Piano Concerto No. 2
There are moments here that make time, and your breath, stand still. If ever you need evidence of the human spirit’s capacity for beauty, look to this remarkable creation of 20-year-old Chopin.
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Béla Bartók Concerto for Orchestra
Every section of the orchestra gets the spotlight to dazzling effect, and the Concerto’s last moments are some of the most thrilling in all classical music.
Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony
New Jersey Symphony Classical
Xian Zhang conductor
Juan Esteban Martinez clarinet
New Jersey Symphony
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Divertimento in D Major, K. 136
The spotlight opens on the New Jersey Symphony’s virtuoso strings playing the sunniest music Mozart ever created.
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Clarinet Concerto
Principal Clarinet Juan Esteban Martinez will shine in this sunny crown jewel of the clarinet repertoire, which was written for an earlier iteration of the modern clarinet.
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Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral”
His greatest inspiration came from long walks in nature, score paper, and pencil stuffed in his pocket. Beethoven takes us with him in his Sixth, his music full of open-air melodies, and the drama of a ferocious storm.
Xian Conducts
Prokofiev & Strauss
New Jersey Symphony Classical
Xian Zhang conductor
Francesca Dego violin
New Jersey Symphony
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Anton Webern Im Sommerwind
A lovingly lush hymn to the charms of summer, written just before Webern helped stand traditional classical music on its head.
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Sergei Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2
It opens with a wisp of melancholy Russian folksong and closes with castanets and Spanish flair, creating fireworks for a world-class violinist and orchestra.
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Richard Strauss Ein Heldenleben
Orchestras love this ode to “A Hero’s Life” for its bold, voluptuous sweep, created by Strauss as a musical pat on his own back.
Mozart’s Requiem
New Jersey Symphony Classical
Xian Zhang conductor
Mei Gui Zhang soprano
Taylor Raven mezzo-soprano
Eric Ferring tenor
Dashon Burton bass-baritone
Montclair State University Chorale | Heather J. Buchanan, director
New Jersey Symphony
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Gabriel Fauré Pavane
A slowly winding melody that started as a simple little five-minute piano solo. But when Fauré orchestrated his Pavane and added the rich sound of a chorus, he made magic and his greatest hit.
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Gustav Mahler Songs of a Wayfarer
Come enjoy one of the finest voices in America: bass-baritone Dashon Burton sings the suite of beautiful songs Mahler wrote as he took solace in nature after being spurned in love.
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Requiem
A swansong full of fire, grace, and a transcendent prayer that the human spirit will live on. Mozart’s Requiem was left maddeningly incomplete at his all-too-early death, but is nevertheless his final masterpiece.
Joshua Bell Leads Mendelssohn’s “Italian”
New Jersey Symphony Classical
Joshua Bell conductor & violin
New Jersey Symphony
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Felix Mendelssohn The Hebrides (Fingal’s Cave)
The music swells and surges just as the waves off Scotland’s coast carried the young Mendelssohn past moody cliffs and caves and sent him reaching for his score paper.
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Édouard Lalo Symphonie espagnole
Though called a “symphony,” this is where superstar Joshua Bell stands and lets his Stradivarius violin sing the silvery songs of Spain.
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Felix Mendelssohn Symphony No. 4, “Italian”
“The jolliest piece I’ve ever done,” wrote an ecstatic young Mendelssohn to his parents back in Berlin, after arriving in Italy and falling in love with its sunshine, sidewalk tunes, coast, and effervescent colors—all of which he poured into his Fourth Symphony.