Enter into the glorious company of Mozart and composer Arvo Pärt, whose timeless music, including Te Deum, Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, and Mozart-Adagio, is intertwined with Mozart's eternal Requiem to evoke ritual, healing, and light. Director Elkhanah Pulitzer, “fearless in [her] dramati...

Embodying the engaging spirit of our Festival's namesake, a charming wind octet—known in Mozart’s time as a Harmonie—of Festival Orchestra members performs a delightful free concert of Harmoniemusik, including the Don Giovanni Overture and an absorbing C-minor Serenade, in the David Rubenstein Atriu...

The charismatic Andrew Manze returns to the Festival to illuminate Webern and explore Mozart's legacy with the resplendent “Linz” Symphony and his delightful Piano Concerto No. 22 featuring the “miraculous” Martin Helmchen (San Diego Union-Tribune).

Bach's achingly beautiful cantatas have inspired centuries of composers, echoed by Brahms and Berg in this gorgeous, intimate program. Music director Louis Langrée’s four-year survey of the complete Brahms symphonies culminates in his ever-popular Fourth, and “thrilling” violinist Augustin Hadelich ...

Mark Morris, the “Mozart of modern dance” (The Washington Post), returns to Lincoln Center with his beloved masterpiece L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato. A marriage of soaring Handel music and life-affirming dance, the work refers to ways of living and dancing at once: mirthful, melancholy, an...

Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven: the supreme triumvirate of Viennese composers is complemented by a New York premiere from Austrian composer HK Gruber, fittingly inspired by Manhattan. “Crisp and confident” American conductor Joshua Weilerstein (New York Times) makes his Festival debut as irresistible pian...

In anticipation of Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson's new opera Blue, the New York Festival of Song performs the music of the Tony Award–winning composer, whose 25-year Broadway career has included the hit shows Thoroughly Modern Millie, Shrek, Fun Home, and Caroline, or Change. Pianist and host...

First broadcast on BBC and PBS in 2012, this movie version of Shakespeare's tragicomic meditation on fathers and sons, nations and rulers, is an exemplary translation from stage to screen. The initial cycle of filmed history plays that make up the series The Hollow Crown, the first part of Henry IV ...

An African American couple in Harlem is filled with hope as well as fear for their activist teenage son: The mother worries for his future, while the father, preparing his son for the realities of 21st-century America, wrestles with his own identity as a police officer, a “Black man in blue.” When t...

“Compelling storyteller” (Guardian) Beatrice Rana expertly uses the keyboard to spin melodic tales of woe and wonder. Experience Rana's spellbinding late-night recital of striking Schumann and Stravinsky. 

The second part of Henry IV follows the up-and-down fortunes of the roguish Sir John Falstaff (Simon Russell Beale) and those of his drinking buddy, the increasingly duty-bound Prince Hal (Tom Hiddleston). Mixing low comedy and piercing melancholy, Part 2 abounds in beautiful speeches and startling ...

In celebration of Beethoven's 250th birthday, two elegant virtuosos perform some of his masterworks with the inimitable Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. Artistic director and “prince of the fortepiano” Kristian Bezuidenhout (Times, U.K.) performs the bold Concerto No. 3 in C minor alongside his period-in...

Dynamite Venezuelan conductor Rafael Payare makes his New York debut with “flair and elegance” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) in a soaring program of Mozart and Mendelssohn. Inimitable pianist Emanuel Ax joins for the inventive “Jenamy” Concerto, and the Festival Orchestra conjures castles, fog-obscured ...

Inspired by a momentous, though brief, meeting between the directors of Colombian dance troupe Compañía Cuerpo de Indias and Kazuo Ohno, late father of the Japanese dance-theater form Butoh, this transcultural tribute is set to some of Leonard Cohen's most transformative songs. Inspired by Ohno’s pa...

In Anthony Braxton's experimental works, performers use written scores, improvisation, and conducting to create complex musical collages which grow and develop in real time. To celebrate the composer’s 75th birthday, the adventurous International Contemporary Ensemble presents Braxton’s Language Mus...

Toast the city's glittering skyline as Emanuel Ax joins his “thoughtful, lyrical, lustrous” pianism (Washington Post) with the “big, rich sound” of violinist Pamela Frank (Philadelphia Inquirer). The frequent recital partners present a dreamlike evening of sonatas by Mozart and Beethoven in the inti...

Move over, Mozart: The Festival Orchestra and guest conductor Richard Egarr present an all-Beethoven program for the composer's 250th birthday, featuring pianist Stephen Hough, who brings “freshness and fire” (New York Classical Review) to the magisterial “Emperor” Concerto. The jovial Eighth Sympho...

The power, beauty, and grandeur of Brahms's beloved Piano Quintet perfectly mirror the monumental sight of New York City at night. Pianist Stephen Hough enhances the “awesome sophistication” (Calgary Herald) of the exhilarating Dover Quartet in this majestic late-evening program. 

Shakespeare's roguish and loquacious knight, Sir John Falstaff, is the central figure of Verdi’s final opera. The 1893 comedy is the perfect vehicle for Iván Fischer to create one of his ingenious semi-staged spectacles, brilliantly blurring the line between concert and theater: Here, musicians doub...

“Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world!” So goes Sir John Falstaff's exuberant self-defense in the face of his friend—and ultimate betrayer—Prince Hal. The line is especially poignant coming as it does from director and star Orson Welles, whom all moviedom seemed to reject after his early mast...

Beethoven's unprecedented Triple Concerto, described as “three times the fun” (Guardian), becomes a triple threat with the all-star lineup of violinist Joshua Bell, pianist Jeremy Denk, and cellist Steven Isserlis. Louis Langrée and the Festival Orchestra heighten the stakes with Mozart’s dramatic S...

The electrifying Junction Trio crafts a compelling program interweaving Beethoven's “Ghost” Trio and a contemporary work that it inspired, John Zorn’s Ghosts. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear the combined forces of three rising young stars and recipients of the Avery Fisher Career Grant: pianist ...

The intrepid International Contemporary Ensemble presents the North American premiere of Thorvaldsdottir's chamber opera, in which a trilogy of lost voices struggles to find its way back to its natural origin—the UR_—to mother Earth and to nature. Portrayed by a mezzo-soprano, an experimental vocali...

Daring pianist Jeremy Denk pairs Beethoven's rapturous final piano sonata with contemporary American works in this astonishing late-night program. 

Named Musical America's 2020 Ensemble of the Year, the electrifying Danish String Quartet brings its “freshness and energy” (Gramophone) to Beethoven’s impassioned C-minor Quartet and Mozart’s entrancing Quartet in E-flat major, K.428.

Witness the “revelatory” Danish String Quartet (BBC Music Magazine) channel ancestral fiddlers and celebrate its Nordic roots in this transporting after-hours concert.  

People gather after the disappearance of Spring. There are questions, accusations, and recriminations, leading to a collective outpouring of loss—the only thing on which the crowd agrees. Finally, a new voice is heard. English composer Jonathan Dove (Flight) and librettist Alasdair Middleton collabo...

In 1808, Beethoven gave an epic concert in Vienna—the Akademie, featuring the premieres of some of his most definitive works: the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies and the “Choral Fantasy,” the first public performance of his Fourth Piano Concerto, and more. In celebration of Beethoven's 250th birthday, do...