ROB DAVIDSON
Emanuel Ax performs with New Jersey Symphony, conducted by Xian Zhang, June 7 at NJPAC in Newark.
At the New Jersey Symphony’s season finale concerts, June 4-7, it wasn’t just Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique that was fantastic. Renowned pianist Emanuel Ax brought his inimitable playing to Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22, which included his own cadenzas that took it far beyond the purely pianistic realm.
The wide range of music in these pieces, which were conducted by music director Xian Zhang, revealed contrasts and connections across the eras, and made for a memorable ending of the Symphony’s 103rd season, which celebrated a decade of music-making under Zhang.
Also on the program was the world premiere of Allison Loggins-Hull’s Doublespeak, conducted by Gregory D. McDaniel. The Montclair-based composer was on hand, June 7 at Prudential Hall of NJPAC in Newark, to take a well-deserved bow. Other performances of the “Season Finale: Symphonie fantastique” concert took place June 4 at The State Theatre in New Brunswick, June 5 at Richardson Auditorium at Princeton University, and June 6 at The Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank.
ROB DAVIDSON
Pianist Emanuel Ax and conductor Xian Zhang with New Jersey Symphony.
Zhang is always at ease with longtime collaborators such as Ax. The Mozart performance, warmhearted and genial, felt like a sparkling musical conversation between them. (Coincidentally, Ax recently started hosting a podcast called “Classical Music Happy Hour,” created by WQXR and Carnegie Hall; visit wnycstudios.org/podcasts/classical-music-happy-hour.)
Instead of the traditional, tufted piano bench, Ax sat at the Steinway concert grand on the same austere chair used by the musicians. The choice felt like a gesture of camaraderie that put everyone on equal ground. Ax has earned the status of an international superstar but does not lock himself in an ivory tower.
His playing of Mozart was the same — never cast in marble — and firmly of the old school, with smooth-as-silk legato and velvety lyricism. Zhang took the middle ground, emphasizing Mozart’s supreme order and balance. It was clear from the unfussiness of the “drum roll” gesture that opens the work that nothing would be too fancy or sweet.
The most thrilling moments came during Ax’s cadenzas, which were not included in Mozart’s 1785 manuscript. Mozart would improvise them during performances; as in many of his piano concertos, this one lacks complete notation in the solo parts, including dynamics, embellishments and ornamentations. Pianists who play the work can use the traditional cadenzas written by Mozart’s contemporaries (the standard Hummel or Hoffmann, for example) or create their own, as Ax did here.
ROB DAVIDSON
New Jersey Symphony, at NJPAC.
While the traditional cadenzas can sometimes feel overcrowded with notes, Ax made them look like models of restraint, pushing the notation to the limit without compromising the flow of tempos. He clearly enjoyed filling in all the missing spots with a delightful sense of irony that seemed to poke fun at the longstanding myth of simplicity in Mozart’s music. For Mozart’s contemporaries, his music was often too complicated.
One couldn’t help but think of the famous criticism by Emperor Joseph II after hearing the premiere of Mozart’s opera “The Abduction From the Seraglio”: “Too many notes, dear Mozart, too many notes.” Ax seemed to turn the quote on its head while also referencing Berlioz, whose manuscripts are cluttered with details and notes.
His second cadenza was a showpiece that complemented the work’s expansive character. Emotional contrasts and unexpected harmonic shifts abounded. There was even a whimsical, improvised, peppy conversation with the flute, which seemed like an intentional callback to Loggins-Hull’s inclusion in the program; she is an acclaimed flutist.
For his encore, Ax played Frédéric Chopin’s Nocturne in F sharp major, handling all the dense curlicues with precision, refinement and charm, and bringing out its blissful tranquility. Beyond the beauty, the selection drew together Ax’s Polish roots with those of Chopin’s, and pointed to Chopin’s monumental Paris era of the 1830s that brought him fame and a friendship with Berlioz.
Both the Nocturne and Berlioz’s fantastique were written in 1830, but represent completely different soundscapes, showing how revolutionary Berlioz was as an orchestrator. He wrote abundantly for natural and specialized brass instruments. Fantastique, for example, uses four horns pitched in three keys that change in each movement. At the concert, the brass were placed prominently on risers, with the woodwinds, behind the strings.
At the press conference announcing this season, Zhang said she picked Symphonie fantastique for the season finale because it was one of the first works she conducted with the Symphony and one of the pieces she thinks they play best. She was not wrong.
Berlioz needs both zest and keen attention to detail. Zhang and the musicians brought out all the changing colors of his recurring leitmotivs (which he called idée fixe, French for “fixed idea”), and their monumental expressive range in the “March” and “Witches’ Sabbath” movements felt true to his rebellious style. Solos moved across the orchestra, rich in the lower brass and woodwind registers. All the musicians played at a very high and energetic level.
ROB DAVIDSON
Conductor Gregory D. McDaniel and composer Allison Loggins-Hull with New Jersey Symphony.
The musicians were arranged in a similar orchestral configuration for Doublespeak, a Symphony commission. Loggins-Hull has been the Symphony’s Resident Artistic Partner since the 2024-25 season. They first played her work in 2021 with an ensemble version of “Can You See?”
The piece takes the standard sonata form with two outer, fast movements and a slower middle, but not much else is traditional. As with much of Loggins-Hull’s music, there is messaging, and this is a protest piece about the duplicity of the modern digital age. (Artists justifiably have much to protest in this era.) The title refers to “the manipulation of meaning: language that disguises reality while appearing to state it plainly,” and the work is an exploration of “the tension between truth, perception and language in modern life.”
The first movement is based on George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.” The opening expresses its iconic line about “doublethink” in Morse code. The symphonic language is mostly atonal and grafted onto the driving rhythm of a snare drum. Later, the snare and a piccolo recreate a traditional, regimental march.
Like most new music, there are repetitive-based techniques. In the second movement, Luciano Berio-like flute flickering suggests “digital blips” of technology, and the mood turns wry. Electric-like effects are created with wind chimes. There are rich contrasts — lyrical moments are balanced with chromatic intensity — and Doublespeak wraps with a message of hopeful vigilance.
McDaniel brought out the piece’s many moods and tonalities with finesse. He is the Symphony’s outgoing Colton Conducting Fellow; the program supports early-career conductors from populations that have been historically underrepresented on the podium. The Symphony just announced its 2026-27 Fellow, Ricardo Ferro.
Though this concert’s music was never sentimental, the intergenerational aspect of the old guard (Ax turned 77 on June 8) and the young lions roaring around the concert hall made the heart warm. The 2026-27 season, which will be Zhang’s penultimate before joining The Seattle Symphony full-time as music director, skews young on talent.
President and CEO Terry D. Loftis spoke after Loggins-Hull’s piece and weighed in on the live music experience, saying that the digital age deepens the appreciation of it, and that exceptional music made by live musicians (as opposed to say, AI chatbots) will always endure. “AI will never replace what you’re seeing up there on the stage,” he said to a round of applause.
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