Beethoven’s almost 200-year-old Symphony No. 9 in d minor remains an astonishing landmark in the history of music as perhaps the greatest, best loved, and most well-known classical work of all time. The concert starts with a work co-comissioned by the NMPhil, in conjunction with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, by contemporary Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ellen Reid.

Love, seduction, death, and survival are all encompassed in Richard Strauss’s tone poem Don Juan. This musical tour de force leaves the narrative of the classic story to the listener and features amazing musicians from the New Mexico Philharmonic in some of the most beautiful orchestral solos ever written. Then, the romantic Ballade written by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a British composer known for his rich orchestral works and brilliant instrumental writing. The concert concludes with the shimmering music evocative of the legend of Scheherazade, the wife who fended off her certain death by telling amazing stories for a thousand and one nights.