Trifonov’s swap of Barber with Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a Theme of Corelli raised the question of what story this unusual program was telling, especially, after experiencing the Sturm und Drang of the curtain-raiser. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Piano Sonata in C-sharp Minor, a posthumously published work, dating from 1865 when the composer was a 25 year old student, was a fascinating concert opener.

Mahler’s Third, which clocked roughly an hour-and-three-quarters this evening and requires women’s chorus, children’s chorus, alto soloist, and orchestral heft including eight horns, is more seldom programmed than his Second, or Bruckner’s Seventh (a mere hour-and-ten-minutes). But, Nézet-Séguin commands this monumental epic assuredly, not wasting a drop of the legendary Philadelphia institution inherited from legendary maestros such as Stokowski and Ormandy. And Mahler’s Third is as Mahlerian as his symphonies come — a broad canvas on which he depicts and explores “nature,” and the human experience, in the broadest sense.

Silent Light, the new, immersive opera by composer Paola Prestini and librettist Royce Vavrek, based upon the 2007 Dutch film Stellet Licht, transports us to a Northern Mexican Mennonite community in this captivating parable of love, duty, temptation, and the role of women in society.

The American Classical Orchestra opened their 40th season on a joyful note. Under the baton of Artistic Director Thomas Crawford, Wednesday’s concert at Alice Tully Hall celebrated the audience as much as the venerable period-instrument ensemble itself. Serving up one of classical music’s great crowd-pleasers, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, Crawford combined a light, breezy touch with heartfelt investment in the music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The Sylvan Winds concluded their forty-fifth season as one of New York’s premiere woodwind quintets with a convivial, festive concert at Merkin Concert Hall. Joined by a mixture of friends and former ensemble members, the evening featured fresh new works, as well as beloved classics, and expanded into veritable wind ensemble works with thirteen players. A “baker’s duodecet?”

Powerful stories of humanity enduring oppression and turmoil took the form of epic soundscapes in Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Songs and Snow, a luxurious performance of two works by composers who march to the beat of their own drums, while sharing an Ives-ian, pan-musical palette: recently departed George Crumb and Chinese-born Tan Dun.

“Yessssss…you may applaud,” winked Kim David Smith, following his breathless opening set as Master of Ceremonies of Tiergarten, the monumental, immersive cabaret experience being staged in The Great Hall under the Church of St. Mary on the Lower East Side. One of the strongest entries in Carnegie Hall’s season-long festival examining the Weimar Republic, Tiergarten is a spectacular convergence of art and entertainment.