Best of Baroque & Classical era, and the end of the Romantics... start your semester off with two gems from the Philadelphia Orchestra!

This upcoming month lends itself to the holidays - to winter break, relaxing, and taking a breather from the trials of a long semester. However, once the new year (and semester) starts, the Orchestra has decided to cap off our vacation with two of the best concerts of the season.

First, on Jan 7-10 we get a concert brimming to the rim with a 'classical' sound, including Mozart's effervescent and sublime Clarinet Concerto, J.S. Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3 - the original source of the famous 'Air on the G String', and the ever-popular Haydn "Surprise" Symphony, where the second movement starts softly and slowly before pulling the rug from underneath the audience with a thunderous entrance: the aforementioned "Surprise" of the title. Combined with a Handel work (why not?), this should be one of the easiest concerts on the ear imaginable, so bring friends along!

Next comes a concert full of romantic longing and dramatic gravitas - the final works of arguably the two last German romantics - Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss (Jan 14-16). Mahler, the first conductor of the New York Philharmonic (and a revolutionary one at that), was unable to finish his 10th Symphony before his early death from heart issues at age 50. While reconstructions have been made of the final four movements, Mahler had actually finished orchestrating the first movement, and it has entered the repertoire as a grand statement of ethereal longing. It not only may be the best of Mahler's late-style work, but also may have pointed towards a new compositional direction should he have lived longer to see it through. Strauss, who would survive Mahler by more than 40 years, wrote his Four Last Songs in the wake of World War II that had destroyed Germany. Rather than defiantly resisting his last days, Strauss wrote four songs of true contemplative depth, filled with acceptance of his inevitable demise and dealing with death in a courageously calm (and deeply stirring) manner. The legendary Karita Mattila, who took New York and the world by storm with her jaw-dropping performance in Strauss' revolutionary opera Salome, sings the composer's final composition in her Philadelphia Orchestra debut.

Two concerts: one with the sublime joys of the classical and baroque era, and one filled with the deep and beautifully haunting final works of two of the greatest romantic composers in history. These two concerts are not to be missed!

--David Gottlieb