The Finale To End All Finales
Classical music doesn't get more cinematic than this... Having recently celebrated the extension of her tenure as the Music Director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Chinese American conductor Xian Zhang leads the ensemble through a Blockbuster All-Orchestral Season Finale program featuring a duo of works by early Romantic era icon Felix Mendelssohn and late Romantic era master Sergei Rachmaninoff.
The evening is off to a rousing start with selections from Mendelssohn's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', incidental music written to accompany Shakespeare's evergreen comedy at the Prussian Royal court in 1843. Filled with sparkly wit and whimsy, its spritely fairy scherzo, haunting nocturne, ebullient clown's jig and rousing finale artfully capture the spirit of the magical story. The program then comes to a close with Rachmaninoff's 1908 Symphony No. 2, a truly epic work that makes the perfect season ender thanks to its triumphant main theme and joyful, rafter-clearing finale.