Los Angeles Philharmonic

A pair of Ravel’s impressionistic masterworks bookend this era spanning concert, led by the prodigious Matthias Pintscher. The enchanting Mother Goose Suite begins the evening amid magical pagodas and fairy gardens. The concert concludes with his dazzling and dizzying La Valse, a masterful juxtaposition of the elegance and violence of 19th-century imperial society. In between the incomparable Emanuel Ax joins the LA Phil for Mozart’s sublime Piano Concerto No. 25. “I think there’s a grandeur about this piece,” says Ax, from its stately opening to its lyrical slow movement Ax describes as “pure magic” to the finger-twisting finale. Pintscher, one of the most exciting compositional voices of his generation, leads the LA premiere of his work neharot, a search for light in the midst of troubled times. Concerts in the Thursday 2 subscription series are generously supported by The Otis Booth Foundation.