FRED STUCKER
Pianist George Li takes a bow at NJPAC in Newark, as New Jersey Symphony music director Xian Zhang and others look on.
New Jersey Symphony opened its 104th season with two early 19th-century masterworks by Austro-German composers at the height of their creativity. The program, titled “Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ & Schubert’s ‘Great,’ ” featured guest pianist George Li in Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, the “Emperor,” and closed with Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 9, the “Great C Major.”
At the Oct. 24 performance at NJPAC in Newark, the musicians were held backstage to warm up. At curtain time, they came streaming out of the wings en masse to take their seats. It was a new and an inspiring effect.
Concertgoers were treated to freshly upholstered seats and refinished flooring — part of a $336 million, multiyear redevelopment of NJPAC’S 12-acre campus in downtown Newark. The project is scheduled for completion in fall 2027.
Music director Xian Zhang — who led the same program Oct. 23 at Richardson Auditorium at Princeton University and Oct. 25 at The State Theatre in New Brunswick — took a lean approach to the Romantic masterworks that seemed to reflect the fact that some American orchestra are facing a precarious moment.
Days before, Phoenix Symphony announced that is suspending its season and laying off its 66 musicians, due to debts of $2.8 million. Last month, The Nashville Symphony announced a $10 million operating deficit and the suspension of its season; at the last minute, Oracle — the technology company that is building its new headquarters in Nashville — stepped in with a $10 million gift and the season will go on.
Zhang’s approach to the music was a reminder that artists cannot switch off their personal feelings onstage. At a post-concert reception, she asked donors, trustees and supporters to help keep the Symphony alive.
Zhang knows the Austro-German Romantic repertoire inside and out. It was her il pane quotidiano — her daily bread as music director of Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano from 2009 to 2016. The program, which pushed the limits of the musicians’ skill and endurance, suited her sense of balance, proportion and attention to fine detail.
Beethoven and Schubert are frequently paired. Schubert revered the older composer and was a torchbearer at his 1827 funeral. Schubert died the following year at 31, and on his deathbed he asked to hear one of Beethoven’s string quartets.
Their music shares a sense of awe and a directness of feeling, but the two had different musical temperaments. Beethoven, a supreme organizer, builds his music logically and with imposing structural power; even in his most chaotic moments, the listener never loses a sense of direction. Schubert is less predictable; his compositions wander, keeping the listener on edge.
FRED STUCKER
Pianist George Li, with Xian Zhang leading New Jersey Symphony, at NJPAC.
The musical conversation between Zhang and Li, a longtime partner of the Symphony, was effortless in the “Emperor.” The dynamic felt close to that of chamber musicians, exchanging little glances here and there.
Zhang kept Li sharply set against the orchestra, an approach more typical of Mozart’s piano concertos. It was not so easy to do with Beethoven’s fifth and final piano concerto, which earned its nickname with its spacious grandeur. There is always an expectation for Beethoven to sound heroic and fierce, with a wide dynamic range and a thunderous sforzando sound. Zhang did not take such a one-sided approach.
Although Beethoven was mainly an instrumental composer, he had a love for cantabile — an expressive, singing line. Zhang addressed this through musical proportion. She narrowed the dynamic extremes and excesses, particularly in the sforzando markings, so they resonated. Even the lower woodwinds were audible. The Adagio un poco mosso was slow and intimate, but it never dragged or turned too somber, as sometimes happens.
The soloist needs brute force for much of Beethoven’s piano writing — especially the cadenzas, which are daring and often break from the mood of the music with harmonic shifts and turns. This concerto tests the pianist’s virtuosity immediately: Beethoven wrote the cadenza at the beginning, rather than near the end of the movement, where it traditionally appears.
Li played with vigorous energy and forward drive. Even the lightest ornaments in the highest octaves were not delicate, whispering suggestions. He dug deep into the keys, yet his sound was never heavy or blurry. His technique was clean and agile.
An expressive and wholly Romantic moment came in the transition from the Adagio to the finale, where the theme emerges on the piano and slowly builds. Li played it with stark contrasts. He began tentatively, as if the notes were stumbling around drunkenly in the dark. When he plunged into the chords that followed, it felt like a spotlight had been turned on, flooding the darkness with light.
FRED STUCKER
Pianist George Li performs with New Jersey Symphony at NJPAC.
After the finale’s ceaseless propulsion, Li returned for an encore, Debussy’s “Clair de Lune,” giving it a dreamy, melancholic, sentimental quality that hadn’t been explored in Beethoven’s concerto. Intentional or not, it made a fun thematic bridge to Schubert.
The composer is often stereotyped as sentimental and melancholy, but he can be so much more, and the “Great C Major” shows his mastery of the larger symphonic forms late in his career. (The work was so large that it initially failed; the original, longer version was shelved after its first rehearsal in 1826 because of its length and difficulty.) Schubert died in 1828 without ever hearing it performed. It premiered over a decade later, when Felix Mendelssohn conducted an edited version at the urging of Robert Schumann, who recognized its genius. It has been part of the standard symphonic repertoire ever since.
Like Mozart, Schubert was a vocal writer at heart, even in his instrumental works. For for three years leading up to the period (1822 to his death in 1828) when he adopted his late style, he composed less instrumental music. But he never stopped writing Singspiel (a type of German opera) or his Lieder (German art songs), which are widely considered unsurpassed.
The orchestra brought out the cantabile phrases, especially the flowing melodic lines in the basses and cellos. Woodwinds were agile and songlike, including second movement solos by principal oboe Robert Ingliss and principal clarinet Juan Esteban Martinez.
Zhang also kept Schubert’s extreme accents carefully balanced, downplaying the heroic, folkish “Alpine” flavors for a fresher, more modern feel. The horns were softly shaped, including the opening solo, played reverently by principal Chris Komer. The trombones, which appear in all four movements and shine in the finale, were crisply articulated alongside the trumpets.
Zhang’s manicured Schubert felt like triumph over chaos, and it was hard not to think of the broader message she was delivering. Not all orchestras feels safe, and the Symphony seemed attentive to this. The evening overall felt austere. The traditional floral arrangements that decorate Zhang’s podium and the stage were missing. Instead of the usual pre-concert fundraising gala, there was a post-performance dessert reception at Nico Kitchen + Bar, the bistro inside NJPAC.
There, Zhang, in her 11th season, congratulated the musicians for throwing themselves into the difficult music with such bravura. They last played the “Great C Major” together a decade ago, and she said they are always playing better and better. Then she mentioned the news about the Phoenix Symphony and made an impassioned appeal to donors and trustees.
“We don’t want that to happen to us, so I’m calling out to all of you helpers: Don’t let that happen to New Jersey Symphony,” she said. “You want to hear this great music again and again. Don’t let us disappear. You can help, so I’m calling out to the Board: Please help us to keep going onward like this.”
FRED STUCKER
New Jersey Symphony plays Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 9, the “Great C Major” at NJPAC.
The Symphony has started to mount its own response. Before the traditional playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” that opens each new season, President and CEO Terry D. Loftis announced from the stage that the Symphony will launch a fundraising campaign called “Light the Stage” on Nov. 16. It is meant “to revive and grow the annual resources needed to deliver the work they do onstage, both Xian (Zhang) and the musicians,” he said.
Funds will also support the new Symphony Center in Jersey City, slated to open in 2027, and the many community outreach and educational initiatives, including their youth orchestras.
The Symphony is also looking toward its next chapter. It recently named Gaetan Le Divelec as vice president of artistic planning and operations. He officially starts on Nov. 1, but he flew in to attend the weekend concerts. He comes from The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, where he has held the same role since 2022, and previously worked for many years at Askonas Holt, an artists management group in London.
He will work with Zhang, Loftis and principal guest conductor Joshua Bell to plan future seasons and the search for the next music director. Zhang, who is in her second season as music director of The Seattle Symphony, will step down after the 2027-28 season, to join that orchestra full time.
On Oct. 24, concertgoers applauded the artists generously. The Symphony will have to wait and see if that enthusiasm translates into philanthropic support.
For more on New Jersey Symphony, visit njsymphony.org.
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