No less than three orchestras descend on the Trenton-Princeton area this weekend. The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and the Princeton Symphony Orchestra will perform at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium (tonight at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m., respectively), and the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic will perform at the Trenton War Memorial’s Patriots Theater (tomorrow at 8 p.m.).
In this three-ring orchestral circus, the clown car is seemingly chock full of Brahms, as he and Beethoven appear on two of the three programs (NJSO & PSO). The NJCP will do their best to keep all the plates spinning with Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade.”
Anthony McGill will unveil Richard Danielpour’s Clarinet Concerto, “From the Mountaintop” (NJSO); Aisha Dossumova will tread the highwire with two violin showpieces, Franz Waxman’s “Carmen Fantasy” and Saint-Saëns’ “Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso” (NJCP); and Joseph Kalichstein, of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, will lend a touch of gravitas with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 (PSO).
Two of Brahms’ four symphonies, fully half of his symphonic output, will be performed on the Richardson concerts. You can read more about it in my articles in today’s Trenton Times:
http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2014/05/scheherazade_at_heart_of_new_j.html
http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2014/05/2_orchestral_concerts_to_featu.html
