New World Symphony to Perform Works By Reich, Stravinsky & Glass at New World Center

Celebrating three iconic composers of the late 20th century, New World Symphony will present works by Steve Reich, Igor Stravinsky, and Philip Glass on Saturday and Sunday, October 24 and 25 at New World Center. Guest conductor and composer Daníel Bjarnason opens the program with his own work before leading the Fellows in works by these three landmark composers. Grammy Award-winning violinist Jennifer Koh joins NWS for the performance.

Spanning more than 80 years of music, the program explores composers who transformed the possibilities of rhythm, repetition, orchestral color, and musical structure. With Steve Reich and Philip Glass both celebrating their 90th birthdays this year, the program takes on added resonance, pairing their music with Stravinsky's wartime Symphony in Three Movements. Guest conductor and composer Daníel Bjarnason opens the program with the third movement of his composition Emergence. His music has been described by Gramophone as “among the most interesting, integral, and skillfully wrought to emerge from a talented crop of Icelandic composers.” Together, the works reveal unexpected connections across generations.

Koh joins the NWS Fellows for Glass' Violin Concerto, his first commission from an American orchestra. Composed in 1987 with his late father in mind, the concerto was Glass' first orchestral work since his student days and marked an important expansion of his distinctive musical language into the traditional concerto form, placing the solo violin in a dynamic relationship with the orchestra.

Koh is celebrated for her commanding performances and dedication to both traditional and contemporary repertoire. Equally at home in works from Bach to today's composers, she is recognized for her dazzling virtuosity, breadth of musical curiosity, and fearless approach to programming. Koh has premiered more than 100 works and developed groundbreaking commissioning projects that have redefined the contemporary violin repertoire.

Reich's Three Movements for Orchestra requires mallet percussion and two pianos to be positioned directly in front of the conductor, providing the work's continuous rhythmic foundation. Across its three movements, Reich returns to the same harmonic progression, using each sonority and the transitions between them to create subtle shifts in color and emotion rather than following traditional harmonic conventions. Lasting approximately 16 minutes, the work takes an arch-shaped form, with two fast outer movements surrounding a slower central movement.

Stravinsky's dynamic Symphony in Three Movements closes the program. Commissioned by the New York Philharmonic in 1945, the work was completed during the final days of World War II, a period Stravinsky described as “our arduous time of sharp and shifting events, of despair and hope, of continual torments, of tension and, at last, cessation and relief...” The work was also influenced by Stravinsky's time in Hollywood, with the second movement drawing on material from a failed film score he had written. The result brings together the musical language of the concert hall with the cinematic world of the silver screen.