Works by Prokofiev New York Performances

At NJPAC, conductor Xian Zhang leads the New Jersey Symphony in a program pairing Sergei Prokofiev with Richard Strauss, placing early‑20th‑century modernism beside late‑Romantic orchestral craft. Prokofiev’s music, shaped by hard-edged rhythms and a dancer’s sense of momentum, meets Strauss’s writing for large forces, where color and narrative impulse often push symphonic form toward the theatrical. Both composers have long histories in New York concert life, from Carnegie Hall to Lincoln Center, as reference points for how the orchestra changed between centuries. One clear takeaway is how differently each composer uses orchestral texture to make drama without words.