Your October guide to Philly-area classical music

Delaware Symphony: Symphonic Dances
Friday October 2 at 7:30pm
Grand Opera House/Copeland Hall, 818 N. Market Street, Wilmington

This concert opens the symphony’s second year under the baton of music director Michelle Di Russo. Because symphonies are programmed well in advance, this is the first season which Di Russo has planned from start to finish. The program opens with celebrated composer Joan Tower’s six-part Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, written between 1987 and 2014. The evening also features Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture, along with pianist Chaeyoung Park in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, and Di Russo closes the program with the Symphonic Dances of Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Tempesta di Mare: Brilliance & Endurance – Music for Tempesta’s Silver Jubilee
Saturday October 3 at 7pm
Trinity @ 22nd, 2212 Spruce Street, Philadelphia

Sunday October 4 at 4pm
Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, 8855 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia

Philadelphia’s acclaimed baroque orchestra opens its 25th anniversary season with works that have defined the ensemble’s remarkable quarter-century of music-making and discovery. The concert includes Jean-Féry Rebel’s creation tone-poem titled The Elements and a “new” recorder concerto by J.S. Bach. The concert also includes the modern premiere (something for which Tempesta has become noted) of a long-undiscovered concerto for orchestra by German composer Johann Frederich Fasch, whose works Tempesta has been instrumental in rediscovering.

Pyxis Piano Trio: A Musical Journey from France to Spain

Saturday October 10 at 3pm
Market Street Music, First & Central Presbyterian Church, 1101 N. Market Street, Wilmington

Wednesday October 21 at 7pm
Delaware Art Museum, 2301 Kentmere Parkway, Wilmington

You can choose from two different dates and two venues for this upcoming concert. The regionally based Pyxis musicians—Luigi Mazzocchi (violin), Jennifer Jie Jin (cello), and Hiroko Yamazaki (piano)—will play piano trios by Germaine Tailleferre and Enrique Granados (Op. 50), as well as Melanie Bonis’s Soir et Matin (Evening and Morning) Op. 76, a work that’s also a piano trio. Note that the concerts are ticketed separately by each presenter.

Opera Delaware: Don Giovanni
October 16 and 18
Grand Opera House/Copeland Hall, 818 N. Market Street, Wilmington

This Mozart opera (Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto) is both a ghost story and a dark comedy, as history’s famous seducer faces the consequences of his lascivious actions. Conducted by Joshua Horsch and staged by Haley Stamats, the cast features Jonathan Bryan as Don Giovanni, Katerina Burton as Donna Anna, Sarah Coit as Donna Elvira, and Hayden Smith as Don Ottavio. On October 8 and 10, the company also presents Don Giovanni Portraits, a 90-minute preview in their studio space weaving performance, storytelling, and the opera’s historical background.

Curtis New Music Ensemble: Words Like Freedom – To Langston with Love
October 17 and 18
Curtis Institute of Music/Gould Rehearsal Hall, 1726 Locust Street, Philadelphia

This concert, packed with works by composers who have set the magnificent words of American poet and writer Langston Hughes, features more than 20 Curtis students, both vocalists and instrumentalists (piano, harp, flute, clarinet, and strings), as well as Curtis staff pianist Reese Reevak. The Saturday evening performance is currently sold out (there’s a waitlist), but as of September 30, there are still tickets for Sunday afternoon.

Opera Philadelphia: Suddenly Last Summer
October 22-25
Forrest Theatre, 1114 Walnut Street, Philadelphia

This is the Philadelphia premiere of Courtney Bryan’s 2026 opera based on the well-known play by Tennessee Williams. Bryan, the company’s former composer-in-residence, is also a MacArthur Fellow, and the libretto is by Gideon Lester and Daniel Fish. Fish, noted for his production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, also directs (with revival director Mikhaela Mahony), and the conductor/music supervisor is Nathan Koci. Performed in English, the contemporary opera features Mikaela Bennett as Catherine Holly and Stephanie Roth Haberle as Mrs. Venable.

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