By Nancy Plum
New Jersey Symphony concluded its 2025-26 Princeton season with a world premiere and an old friend. Under the leadership of Music Director Xian Zhang and Conducting Fellow Gregory D. McDaniel, the Symphony brought both a new commission and a popular Mozart piano concerto to Richardson Auditorium last Friday night. Featured in the Mozart work was guest soloist Emanuel Ax, renowned for his distinctive interpretation of music of the Classical era, especially Mozart.
New Jersey Symphony opened Friday night’s program with a symphonic tone poem by Symphony Resident Artist Partner Allison Loggins-Hull. Doublespeak, composed in three continuous movements, was conceived to explore the “tension between truth, perception and language in modern life.” Rooted in such contemporary developments as modern technology and connectivity, Morse code and the writings of George Orwell, Hull’s piece reminded the audience of the persistent dichotomy between technology and daily life.
Conducted by McDaniel, Doublespeak began with Morse code raindrops from the piano. The orchestral texture was full of repeated motives and string intensity, offset by delicate instrumental solos. McDaniel expertly handled the numerous style transitions, and intensity was built effectively with penetrating clarinets and bassoons.
Dating from 1785, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat Major was progressive in its use of clarinets rather than the customary oboes. Its first movement “Allegro” recalled a Mozart composition from his childhood, and the middle “Andante” astounded 18th-century audiences to the point of demanded repeats in concerts, also unusual for the time.
Conductor Zhang and the Symphony opened the Concerto with a crisp theme, well-tuned pair of horns and elegant clarinets. The instrumentalists were seated close around Zhang on the podium and Ax at the piano, facilitating exact rhythmic timing. Ax is always a stylistic keyboard soloist, constructing each phrase uniquely and maintaining solid communication with the orchestra. The first movement required him to play with a lithe right hand, as he conveyed a playful second theme and gentle cadences. The first and third movement cadenzas, which were Ax’s own compositions, were perhaps flashier than Mozart might have written, but gave Ax the opportunity to demonstrate flawless technique and an inspired imagination.
Both conductor and soloist took a courtly tempo with the playful opening theme of the final movement. Dramatic when the full orchestra was together, the music was pure Mozart charm, with shades of a Viennese hunt portrayed by precise horns. Passages scored for piano, string quartet and a pair of horns were performed delicately, with graceful wind solos from flutist Bart Feller, oboist Robert Ingliss, clarinetist Juan Esteban Martinez, and bassoonist Robert Wagner.
To 19th-century French composer Hector Berlioz, bigger was definitely better. Driven by Beethoven’s expansion of the symphonic form, Berlioz took orchestral music to new heights. The 1830 Symphonie fantastique, or “Episode in the Life of an Artist,” depicted Berlioz’s obsession with an Irish actress in five programmatic movements extending both the definition of a symphony and the orchestral ensemble itself. The Richardson stage was jam-packed for New Jersey Symphony’s presentation of this work, with thirteen brass players and four timpani alone.
The Symphony musicians began the Symphonie with clean winds and a lean string sound, building drama as the first movement picked up speed. Each movement represented a different phase of the fantasized romance between Berlioz and his beloved, with the introductory “Reveries and Passions” showing touches of what the future could be. Conductor Zhang maintained a chipper lilt to the second movement waltz, contrasted by quirky clarinet writing well played by Martinez and Andrew Lamy.
English horn player Andrew Adelson provided pastoral elegance in the third movement “In the County,” accompanied by a lush viola sectional sound and refined solo lines from concertmaster Eric Wyrick and flutist Feller. Equally as rich lower strings added an element of ominous character leading to the jarring closing movements. Full brass and timpani rattled the rafters in the hall as Berlioz’s world unraveled, and the macabre took over. Clarinetists Martinez and Lamy suggested a circus atmosphere with klezmer-like playing, and bells tolled the end of reality as the artist knew it. The deathly “Dies Irae” theme was crisply played repeatedly by a number of instruments, confirming the eternal doom of the composer’s musical hallucinations. Symphonie fantastique told a very different story than Loggins-Hull’s Doublespeak, but both narratives expressed great depth of human behavior and showed New Jersey Symphony to be up to great dramatic challenges.