About This Concert You’ll know it from the first note! Tchaikovsky’s famous Piano Concerto No. 1 has everything you could want in a piano concerto: jaw-dropping virtuosity, finger-flying fireworks, and impassioned melodies you’ll be humming on the way home. Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben serves up epic battle scenes, tender love scenes, and gripping drama, portrayed through … Continued

About This Concert Under Joseph Stalin’s brutal regime, being an artist meant extreme censorship, unimaginable pressure, and life-or-death stakes. No composer of the era embodied this more than Dmitri Shostakovich, and in his Symphony No. 10—the first of his symphonies to be composed after Stalin’s death—his newfound artistic freedom unleashed an explosive torrent of earth-shaking … Continued

About This Concert The virtuosity of the Houston Symphony will be on full display with dazzling delights guaranteed to get your blood pumping and your toes tapping! Ginastera’s Variaciones Concertantes crackles with Argentinian rhythms, while Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 unfurls an exhilarating whirlwind of folk-dance flavor. In Gabriela Ortiz’s showstopping Antrópolis, joyful percussion grooves … Continued

About This Concert Filled with hummable themes and sultry jazz tones, Gershwin’s crowd-pleasing Concerto in F will glisten and glow in the hands of Hélène Grimaud. Like Gershwin, Kurt Weill’s talents ranged from symphonies to Broadway and popular music (most notably, the jazz standard “Mack the Knife”), and his irresistible Symphony No. 2 showcases his … Continued

About This Concert Composed during a vacation in Cairo, Saint-Saëns’s crowd-pleasing Piano Concerto No. 5, Egyptian runs the gamut from delicate grace to powerhouse virtuosity. Beloved for his captivating mix of dramatic flair and tour-de-force brilliance, Jean-Yves Thibaudet will leave you spellbound. And, castanets click, fiery flamenco rhythms blaze, and sensuous sonic colors saturate the … Continued

About This Concert Inspired by the legend of The Firebird—a magical glowing bird from Slavic folklore—Stravinsky’s Firebird dazzles from first note to heart-pounding finale. It’s the music that made Stravinsky an overnight star, putting the world on notice that a genius had arrived. Soprano Angel Blue makes her Houston Symphony debut in Florent Schmitt’s beyond-epic … Continued

About This Concert The Houston Symphony performs Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 live in Houston May 22–24, 2026. For the grand finale to our classical season, Music Director Juraj Valčuha leads Mahler’s final completed work, the extraordinary Symphony No. 9. To hear one of Mahler’s symphonies live is to feel why it’s an experience unlike anything … Continued

About This Concert Conducting legend Marin Alsop unlocks the luminous jewel case that is Brahms’s Symphony No. 2: overflowing with gorgeous melodies that melt the heart, it ends with a triumphant burst of pure joy. Love is the unifying thread in Bernstein’s Serenade (After Plato’s “Symposium”), performed with dazzling virtuosity by Concertmaster Yoonshin Song. An … Continued