The centennial of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue continued into its fourth quarter with The Knights’ latest at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, featuring a world premiere as part of their multi-season Rhapsody-themed commissioning project. The Brooklyn-based orchestra welcomed pianist Aaron Diehl for a unique take on Gershwin’s familiar piece for piano and orchestra, a new composition for the same combination by Michael Schachter, balanced, in a stroke of programming ingenuity, with Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony.

Carnegie Hall’s 2024-25 season opened with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in three concerts that established a jubilant tone for the venue’s new festival, Nuestros sonidos (“Our Sounds”), which celebrates the impact of Latin-American culture on the United States.

The nocturne and the enduring theme of night music was explored in the latest Merkin Hall performance by Parlando. Conductor Ian Niederhoffer, who founded this intrepid and promising chamber orchestra in 2019, conceived and led a packed house through an insightful and captivating rumination on the musical night-scape.

Eyes and ears are focused on the New York Philharmonic this week. A new collective bargaining agreement with the American Federation of Musicians has been reached, promising significant pay increases and important cultural changes. Future music director Gustavo Dudamel doesn’t take the helm until 2026, and role of CEO is currently in limbo.

The salon-like ambiance was ideal for Beethoven at his most Schubertian: Piano Sonata No. 27 in E Minor, Op. 90, a two-movement piece from the composer’s “late-middle” (or some could argue, “early-late”) period. Far from the bombast of the Appasionata, the first movement of Op. 90, “Lively, with feeling and expression throughout,” finds the composer turning inward, examining — through an expansive sense of melody that points the way not only for Schubert, but Romantic composers in general — the dichotomies of existence, the positive and negative implications of each musical germ. And by the second movement, a lilting rondo “To be played no too fast and very songfully,” it was clear that melody — not only Kissin’s plush, versatile voicing in the keys, but his free flowing eloquence in sculpting and shaping phrases — was the star of this show.

AIt was a difficult opera to watch. As Danny Chen, Brian Vu’s powerful lyric tenor is as steely as it is plush, and he delivered a brave, stoic performance that haunted the courtroom proceedings, shared lighter scenes with hints of romance with the earnest and clear mezzo-soprano Hannah Cho, and endured unconscionable, racially-motivated violence.

Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K. 551 is a force of nature, a masterpiece that seems an integral fabric of our musical galaxy, (if you were born after 1788). Like the weather and the sky, it continues to surprise and awe. Known better by its moniker Jupiter, the piece formed the nucleus of the final concert of American Classical Orchestra’s 39th season. Winkingly united under the theme Astronomical, Thomas Crawford led his venerable period instrument orchestra in an evening of selections that brought telescopic perspective to the orbital trajectories, the half-lives, of musical compositions.