Shostakovich + Stravinsky's Chamber Symphonies

Compact ensembles, shifting textures and bold rhythmic contrasts shape a program spanning 20th- and 21st-century chamber music. The concert takes place Saturday, September 26 at New World Center in Miami Beach, with Nicholas Hersh conducting Fellows of the New World Symphony. Admission is pay what you wish.

The program opens with Einojuhani Rautavaara’s four-movement A Requiem in Our Time, followed by Steve Reich’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Double Sextet, built from interlocking patterns and propulsive repetition. After intermission, Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments pairs concentrated sonorities with ritual-like structure.

The evening concludes with Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony, Op. 110a, an arrangement of his intensely personal Eighth String Quartet that moves between grief, agitation and reflection. Hersh, music director of the Modesto Symphony and former associate conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, leads New World Symphony Fellows through the program’s contrasting musical languages.