The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the state’s preeminent performing arts organization, is one of the oldest orchestras in the United States. It was founded in 1922, but traces its roots to 1846, when the Eintracht Orchestra and Singing Society of Newark was founded. Today, the NJSO fulfills its mission as a true state orchestra by [...]

A large work for orchestra, usually with multiple movements. The movements are usually grouped in the order of fast, slow, minuet or some other dance, and fast. In the symphony, the orchestra is the soloist, which is where the term “symphony orchestra”, as in the Boston Symphony Orchestra, originated.

Literally meaning “joke”, this is usually the third movement of a larger work such as a symphony or sonata, and is often quick in tempo and light in style.

Cocktail Party Fact: Premiered and broadcast at the height of the Second World War, the limpid beauty of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ 5th Symphony had the effect on listeners huddled in air raid shelters of, in the words of one Londoner, “a reassuring hand on one’s shoulder.”
Commitment Factor: About 38 minutes.
Vital Statistics: Modern Period. A [...]

Committment Factor: About 32 minutes.
Vital Statistics: Modern Period. A symphony in four movements.
What to Listen For: Audiences expecting anything like the meditative beauty of the composer’s 3rd Symphony were stunned by the 4th. The first movement opens in a mood of apoplectic rage: you can practically see the composer’s fist in your face. The [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: This most English of symphonies began its life in France, where Ralph Vaughan Williams was stationed during the First World War. The sounds of a bugler practicing at sunset became the trumpet and horn solos in the second movement. The Pastoral Symphony can be heard as a kind of nostalgic farewell to [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: “Pathetique” does NOT mean “pathetic,” but rather moody and dramatic.
Commitment Factor: About 45 -50 minutes
Vital Statistics: Late Romantic Period (1893). A four-movement symphony that ends, very unconventionally, with a slow movement expressing complete, helpless despair.
What to Listen For: There is a touch of cyclical form here. If you listen carefully, you might [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Tchaikovsky always hated his most recent work–none more so that this, his most popular symphony. He called it “artificial” and “repellent.” Fortunately, no one else paid attention.
Commitment Factor: About 50 minutes
Vital Statistics: Romantic Period (1887). A four-movement symphony with a “motto” theme that returns in each movement.
What to Listen For: The [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: This symphony was composed as recovery therapy following a rather half-hearted suicide attempt. A tormented homosexual, Tchaikovsky foolishly married a neurotic music student he hardly knew, then tried to kill himself by standing naked in the Volga river in mid-winter. His wife, whom he never divorced, went crazy and died in an [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Jean Sibelius premiered this one-movement work under the title “Fantasia Sinfonica.” It was only later that he decided that it was his Seventh Symphony.
Commitment Factor: About 23 minutes.
Vital Statistics: Late-late Romantic Period. Late Sibelius, really: timeless, speaking its own unique language.
What to Listen For: Note how Sibelius repeatedly employs a kind [...]