March 2025 Concerts

♦ PITTSBURGH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
♦ Lisiecki Performs Mozart
Heinz Hall
03/07 7:30PM
03/09 2:30PM

NORIKO KOIDE: Swaddling Silk and Gossamer Rain [PSO Premiere]
MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 22
PROKOFIEV: Symphony No. 5

Notes: Praised for his “pristine, lyrical and intelligent” playing (The New York Times), Jan Lisiecki returns to perform Mozart’s elegant and effervescent piano concerto. Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony is filled with grand, sweeping, lyrical music tinged with brooding introspection. When his Fifth premiered in the US, Prokofiev’s picture graced the cover of Time Magazine, and the magazine’s lengthy profile of him quoted Koussevitzky’s assessment: “[The Fifth Symphony is] the greatest musical event in many, many years. The greatest since Brahms and Tchaikovsky! It is magnificent! It is yesterday, it is today, it is tomorrow.”

♦ Lang Lang with the PSO
Heinz Hall
03/19 7:30PM

Verdi: Overture to La forza del destino
Grieg: Selections from Suite from Peer Gynt
Huanzhi Li: Spring Festival Overture *PSO Premiere
Grieg: Piano Concerto

Notes: Superstar Lang Lang, named “the hottest artist on the classical music planet,” by The New York Times, returns to Heinz Hall to perform the Grieg Piano Concerto in this one-night-only evening of piano pyrotechnics. Additional program details to be announced.

♦ Kanneh-Mason Performs Shostakovich
Heinz Hall
03/21 7:30PM
03/23 2:30PM

NINA SHEKHAR: Lumina [PSO Premiere]
SHOSTAKOVICH: Cello Concerto No. 1
R. STRAUSS: Don Juan
R. STRAUSS/HONECK/ILLE: Suite from Arabella [World Premiere & PSO Commission]

Notes: One of the most gifted young artists onstage today, Sheku Kanneh-Mason capitulated to international fame with his performance at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. He makes his Pittsburgh Symphony debut with Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto. Nina Shekhar’s new work “explodes like an orchestral supernova” (LA Times). The program is rounded out with two wonderfully passionate works by Strauss.

♦ Beethoven’s Pastoral
Heinz Hall
03/28 7:30PM
03/29 7:30PM
03/30 2:30PM

HANNAH EISENDLE: Heliosis [PSO Premiere]
LISZT: Piano Concerto No. 2
IMAN HABIBI: “Jeder Baum Spricht” [PSO Premiere]
BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral”

Notes: The PSO’s season features works inspired by the natural world: Beethoven’s “Pastoral” you can hear bucolic bird calls, the rolling of thunder, and the calling of a shepherd’s pipes from distant hills. Habibi’s new work was written as a meditation on climate change. Eisendle’s Heliosis, from the Greek word for the sun, is in turn blistering, scorching, and shimmering.

♦ CITY THEATRE
♦ Birthday Candles
1300 Bingham Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15203

Notes: Another year. Another cake. Another goldfish. An inquisitive, hilarious and heartwarming play (and Broadway hit), Birthday Candles examines one woman’s life – one birthday at a time – and asks where our place in the universe is and what would you risk for the perfect gift? Join Ernestine as she takes us through a century of ordinarily extraordinary moments and dreams in this work hailed as“epic and beautifully written” (NY Daily News).

♦ PITTSBURGH OPERA
♦ Madama Butterfly
Benedum Center
03/22 8:00PM, 03/25 7:00PM, 03/28 7:30PM, 03/30 2:00PM

Notes: His escape is her cage.

In this groundbreaking new production created by an all Japanese and Japanese American creative team, Madama Butterfly’s story is transported to a fantastical realm where reality and dreams intersect. Pinkerton puts on a VR headset and transports us into a vibrant virtual reality playground where he has ultimate control. As his avatar, a U.S. Navy Lieutenant, he can seduce and marry his fantasy girl and abandon her just as easily. But to Cio-Cio San, this is no game and the love and betrayal she feels is all too real. Enveloped in Puccini’s stunning music, this visually beautiful production is the perfect match. Pittsburgh Opera is proud to partner with Cincinnati Opera, Detroit Opera, and Utah Opera to co-produce this reinvention of Puccini’s classic, uncovering new and resonant meaning for all audiences to enjoy.

♦ PITTSBURGH CONCERT CHORALE
♦ Verdi Requiem
Carnegie Music Hall, Oakland, PA
03/02 4:00

Notes: The Classics concert encompasses great music, from masterworks with  orchestra to small a cappella choral music gems. Recent performances  include Faure Requiem, Bernstein Chichester Psalms, Orff Carmina Burana,  and Mozart Requiem.Our 40th Anniversary Season’s concert will feature the great Verdi  Requiem with internationally-acclaimed soloists and, as always in our  Classics performances, a professional orchestra.​Considered one of the greatest choral works ever set to the Requiem  text, the Catholic funeral mass, this work is Verdi’s largest  composition outside of his operas. It is scored for four soloists,  orchestra and double chorus. Due to the scale of the forces required for  its performance, it is typically done in concert halls rather than in  churches.