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The season opens with an evening of soulful masterworks rife with musical and emotional turmoil. The ever-shifting textures and styles of Nielson's single-movement clarinet concerto are paired Brahms’s Third Symphony, which exudes the composer’s characteristic angst as it alternates between major and minor. The moody prelude to Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde rounds out the program.

Maestro Esa-Pekka Salonen returns to Walt Disney Concert Hall for an all-Finnish program featuring some of Sibelius’s greatest hits. After an ethereal piece by Kaija Saariaho – a work dedicated to Salonen himself – the violin shines in Sibelius’s brooding Violin Concerto before the soaring melodies and triumphant timbre of Sibelius’s Second Symphony close out the concert.

Immerse yourself in musical imagery that paints vivid pictures of literature and life. The journey of errant knight Don Quixote is depicted through solo instruments in Strauss’s tone poem of the same name. Debussy brings an undulating seascape to life in his famous La mer and a piece by Renee Esmail uses a unique oboe duet to capture the uncertainty felt in concert halls in 2021.

The two critically-panned works on this program have since become audience favorites. Shostakovich’s Sixth starts with an achingly emotional slow movement before plunging toward a fast and fiery finish. In Tchaikovsky's lively Violin Concerto, the virtuosic demands made on the soloist never fail to leave audiences awestruck.

Under the batons of Salonen Fellows Mert Yalniz and Aleksandra Melaniuk, soloists from the Conservatory perform concerto movements with the Colburn Orchestra.

This afternoon of playful pieces begins with Gershwin’s An American in Paris, which paints a vivid picture of life in the French capital—bustling streets, car horns, and all. The musical fireworks continue in a jazz-influenced piano concerto by Ravel before the lively spirit and dance-like melodies of Dvořák’s Eight Symphony close out the program.