Star Wars, E.T., Jaws and more… John Williams has captured the public imagination with his orchestral scores for Hollywood’s biggest films. Artistic Director Stéphane Denève closes New World Symphony’s season by charting the evolution of one of our best-known living composers, sharing two evocative works written 40 years apart. “A violinist in a class all his own,” James Ehnes takes the stage for Williams’s First Violin Concerto, dedicated to the memory of the composer’s late wife (The Times).

Then, the concert takes a wild, heart-thumping turn as 87 of the world’s best young musicians take on Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Met with controversy at its premiere, this pagan ballet found new life in Walt Disney’s Fantasia (1940) where it was accompanied by a prehistoric battle scene. The piece is introduced with the world premiere of Guillaume Connesson’s The Three Seasons, a prelude to The Rite of Spring that uses the same instrumentation and mythic references as Stravinsky.