Scottish Symphony New York Performances

Felix Mendelssohn’s “Scottish Symphony” is a travel work in sound, shaped by the composer’s time in Edinburgh and his impressions of its landscape and ruins. At David Geffen Hall, Marek Janowski leads the New York Philharmonic in a reading that keeps the score’s scenes connected, with principal trumpet Christopher Martin featured elsewhere on the program. First heard in the mid-19th century, the symphony reflects how Romantic-era composers turned place into narrative without using text. Its strength is its continuity: the music moves like a single, unfolding recollection rather than four separate tableaux.