Carmen / Aranjuez

Stravinsky’s dazzling Firebird Suite blazes to life in the Philharmonic’s season opener. Music Director Chloé Dufresne takes the podium for her highly anticipated debut, joined by the soaring passion of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and the cosmic brilliance of Camille Pépin’s Laniakea.

It begins with four notes that changed music forever. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony storms the stage in a defiant journey from darkness to triumphant light. Hannah Kendall’s Spark Catchers gives voice to working women in 1800’s London factories, while Michael Daugherty paints the labor and fire of Detroit steel. Together, these works blaze with resilience, struggle, and ultimate triumph.

Think a piano can’t roar like an orchestra? Brahms’ Second Concerto proves otherwise—epic in scale, thunderous in power, yet tender in its most lyrical moments. Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini plunges into Dante’s whirlwind of forbidden love and despair, music as fevered as it is heartbreaking.

The heat of Spain ignites the stage in Bizet’s Carmen, a story of love, rebellion, and freedom told through some of the most iconic music ever written. Star guitarist JIJI […]

Every great composer has a moment when the world first takes notice. For Grieg, it was the Piano Concerto, composed at just 24 and overflowing with Romantic passion. Shostakovich was even younger—only 19—when his astonishing First Symphony launched him to international fame. When genius strikes young, it sets the world on fire.