PSO STAFF
ROSSEN MILANOV
What gift do you get for the maestro who has everything? Judging by Rossen Milanov’s 2024-25 season for Princeton Symphony Orchestra, the gift is music.
The symphony’s Edward T. Cone Music Director will celebrate his 60th birthday with a lineup of classical concerts, from September to May, featuring near and dear artists, composers and works.
“We put the season together for me not only to do pieces that I feel very comfortable conducting and that I feel that I have a very unique message to transmit through the works, but also to invite artists that I have good connections with, and people that I have worked with in the past that I just love to share the stage with,” he says.
He will also highlight the educational and artistic partners from the surrounding communities that he has cultivated over 15 years of leadership.
“The season is a celebration of Princeton, and of different cultures and types of music, and the many different ways of reaching diverse audiences,” he says. “It’s what the orchestra has grown to become: a really important creative muscle of Central Jersey.”
GEMMA PEACOCKE
The season-opening “Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto” program, Sept. 14-15, will begin with Gemma Peacocke’s Manta (2023). Peacocke, a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University, was inspired by the manta rays from the seas around her native New Zealand. The work is scored for orchestra and youth chamber string orchestra, so young musicians from the Youth Orchestra of Central Jersey, PSO partners since 2020, will play alongside symphony musicians.
Guest violinist Aubree Oliverson will make her PSO debut at these concerts, with Tchaikovsky’s virtuosic Violin Concert in D Major. Milanov met her five years ago while he was guest conducting the Colburn Orchestra in Los Angeles, and the two hit it off and remained friends. The concerts will close with the melancholy shades and deep, dark passacaglia of Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 in E Minor.
Another treasured friend will take center stage in the “Rachmaninoff with Natasha Paremski” program, May 10-11, to close the season.
“I’ve performed pretty much any piano concerto that is out there with her, from the big ones onward,” Milanov says of Paremski. “She’s going to come here with probably the biggest one of them all: Rachmaninoff’s Third piano concerto.” The Russian-American pianist will tackle the complex passagework and challenging cadenzas of this thrilling showpiece.
“This concert also gives us the opportunity to collaborate with another organization from the Princeton area that I’ve established a partnership with, the Westminster College Choir,” Milanov says. The affiliation with the Westminster Conservatory, the community music school of Westminster College of the Arts of Rider University, goes back to 2017.
“The choral ensemble is going to open with this beautiful a cappella Tchaikovsky arrangement of a liturgic piece, ‘Hymn of the Cherubim’ (from the composer’s Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom), and a rarely performed piece by Brahms called the Schicksalslied.”
BASIA DANILOW
Milanov’s longstanding allyships with PSO musicians and the finesse of its principals will be on display Oct. 19-20 in the “Beethoven’s Triple” program. Concertmaster Basia Danilow and principal cellist Alistair MacRae will be joined by pianist Steven Beck for Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, an expressive chamber piece for violin, cello and piano.
Milanov has teamed up with Danilow and MacRae since becoming music director in 2009.
“My profession would be absolutely nothing without the wonderful musicians that I collaborate with,” he says. “We have a whole legacy of people who start in Princeton and continue onto bigger orchestras all over the world. We are always very proud to be able to provide the initial steps of the careers of musicians who will become famous, and proud that they spent some time with us.”
Many of the orchestra’s musicians have gone onto opportunities in the orchestral world, becoming principal players at ensembles including New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Milanov also has guided rising conductors including John Devlin, PSO assistant conductor from 2015 to 2018, who became music director of Wheeling Symphony Orchestra in 2019.
The October concerts will also include Michael Abels’ More Seasons, a postmodern exploration of Vivaldi’s popular Baroque violin concerto suite, “The Four Seasons.” Abels is best known as a composer for the soundtracks of films, including the psychological horror works of Jordan Peele. The program will close with Prokofiev’s stylish and beloved First Symphony, nicknamed “Classical” for its spin on Haydn and Mozart’s classicism.
STEPHEN PARISER
ROSSEN MILANOV
If you are familiar with Milanov’s PSO programming, you know that Russian repertoire is often front and center. There will be no exception this season.
“As you can see here, we have quite a number of prominent Russian composers and I think this has become something of my specialty in Princeton,” he says. “I would say, over the years, I have performed pretty much all the important household-known pieces that come from the Russian and Soviet repertoire: a lot of Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky and, of course, Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff.”
He explains his affinity to Russia music by saying, “It’s part of my DNA because I’m a Slav, I’m born in Bulgaria. Russian music was a very big part of my upbringing and I speak the language fluently.”
While studying conducting at the Bulgarian Music Academy in Sofia, he would often use Russian-language textbooks out of necessity. “The country was small and bilingual at the time, and as far as music theory or anything else that we may have needed as part of our courses, it was much easier to tap into the book publishing market of The Soviet Union at the time than getting our very specialized books.”
In addition to his position at PSO, he is music director of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra. He also held past directorships at the Philadelphia Orchestra, Symphony in C in Camden, and New Symphony Orchestra in Bulgaria.
TOM ZIMBEROFF
LEILA JOSEFOWICZ
The Jan. 11-12 program, “Rossen’s 60th Birthday Celebration,” will fall closest to his Jan. 13 birth date. It will feature one of his favorite artists, the American-Canadian classical violinist Leila Josefowicz, in Stravinsky’s exuberant, neo-classical Violin Concerto.
“I have performed with Leila on many different continents with many different orchestras,” he says, “so I’m just so pleased she agreed to be the featured artist at the concert that is closest to my birthday.”
The program also includes Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony, the Russian composer’s largest symphonic work in both length and instrumentation. (It is rarely heard in the concert hall due to its scale and complexity.)
Milanov is not afraid to take risks when it comes to conducting intricate, challenging music. His PSO programming often includes the towering genre of the symphonic form, which can be demanding for concertgoers and musicians alike, though he finds it rewarding and accessible.
“When you have a bigger symphonic form, the ideas are a little bit more complex, they take a little bit longer to unfold, and there is always some sort of resolution at the end, one way or another, that perhaps teaches us something about our life, about our understanding of people and of approaching conflict and resolution.
“Generally, I think it gives us a window to things that sometimes we could only imagine but not experience. With music, one could experience a lot of things and find great emotional depth without necessarily being there: It could be moments of sadness, a celebration or a personal loss, but there are also moments of encouragement and compassion.
“We have to deal with all of these things in our personal lives on a daily basis when one gets exposed to an artform. Whether you go to a museum, a theater or an orchestral concert, you are encouraged to share these ideas with the audience and those presented by the composers, which I think is very humane and very important for all of us to preserve and support.”
One of Beethoven’s more amiable and crowd-pleasing symphonies, the nature-inspired “Pastoral,” will take center stage at the “Beethoven’s Sixth & Sō Percussion” concerts, March 8-9. And two contrasting companion pieces will show off Milanov’s enthusiasm for adventurous, contemporary works.
ANJA SCHUTZ
Sō Percussion (from left, Jason Treuting, Adam Sliwinski, Eric Cha-Beach and Josh Quillen).
During his tenure, the PSO has commissioned or co-commissioned seven new pieces by established and up-and-coming living composers. Princeton University performers-in-residence Sō Percussion will perform Viet Cuong’s Re(new)al, an ode to renewable energy; scored for percussion quartet and wind ensemble, it also includes “found” instruments of crystal glasses and environmentally friendly cans of compressed air. The second modern piece will be Carlos Simon’s Four Black American Dances, an orchestral study of the music associated with various dances within Black American communities.
Guest conductor Gérard Korsten will lead the Feb. 8-9 concerts “All Mozart with Orli Shaham,” with pianist Shaham in Mozart’s stormy Piano Concerto No. 20. The program will also include the ballet music from Idomeneo, the Austrian composer’s 1781 opera seria; and his Symphony No. 39 in E-flat Major, one of his last symphonies.
The season of highly personal works will be a departure from last year’s theme, which opened with Sarah Kirkland Snider’s inspirational Forward Into Light and featured new works by contemporary composers and historic works by traditionally underrepresented or undervalued composers.
Whether programming embraces sweeping Romanticism or edgy Modernism, Milanov aims to create new memories and connect with wide audiences. He feels both “fortunate and humble” as he looks back on his musical journey and begins another decade in his life.
“Making that decision back in 2008 to join the Princeton Symphony as music director … I had no idea where it was going to take me,” he says. “All the opportunities and accomplishments have turned out to be something I cherish very much and something I consider one of perhaps the greatest legacies of me as a musician.
“I was able to make a big difference both in the community of Princeton and also in all the connections in the area. I’m also proud of expanding the symphony, raising the quality of the orchestra and making the symphony relevant to a lot more people in different and more diverse communities that we ever had in the past.”
Milanov also has been music director of PSO’s flagship summer celebration, The Princeton Festival, since 2022.
“Opera is somewhat the centerpiece of each festival since its formation and The Princeton Festival has given me the opportunity to add that musical genre to my portfolio of things that I do on a yearly basis,” he says. “It’s something that I think fits our organization very well and it just creates an opportunity to expand in a very uniquely Princeton way on the grounds of the beautiful Morven Museum and Garden.”
PSO STAFF
Zulimar López-Hernández, left, and Jeremy Harr co-starred in Mozart’s “Così fan tutte” at this year’s Princeton Festival.
In 2021, he brokered a merger between the symphony and the Festival, unifying them into a performing arts organization that sits alongside the symphony’s orchestral, pops and chamber music offerings, and the PSO BRAVO! educational programs, which serves 10,000 New Jersey students annually.
With the passing of another year, he reflects on the meaningful relationships that shaped his musical journey, and expresses gratitude to PSO’s executive director Marc Uys and the board. “It’s a collective effort, not just my effort, so I would just like to give credit to everyone that is part of our organization,” he says.
He also recognizes Melanie Clarke, who played violin with the orchestra for 16 years and then served as manager of education and director of development before becoming executive director from 2006 to 2015. “We not only have a very strong professional relationship and understanding,” he says, “but we have kept our friendship and she has been so instrumental in myself becoming the artistic leader that I am today.”
Founded in 1980, the PSO is Princeton’s only professional, independent orchestra. Its performance home is Richardson Auditorium, located in Alexander Hall on the campus of Princeton University, where all classical season concerts take place on select Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 4 p.m.
The intimate, 19th century gem seats up to 900 concertgoers and is rich with ornate carvings and mosaics.
“What’s important about Princeton is that in addition to having wonderful musicians, we also have a permanent place where we perform, the wonderful Richardson Auditorium,” says Milanov. “Having the opportunity to perform and rehearse in this space, and the fact that the source of the sound, which is the musicians and the instruments of the orchestra, is so close to the audience … it has this incredible intimacy of the sound.
“My goal has been to create a symphonic experience that is very intimate and that has the refinement of a chamber music concert, but without necessarily sacrificing the grand ideas and the important message of large symphonic works … As you could imagine, this kind of configuration allows us to share something with the community that is immediate, personal and vital.”
For information on the Princeton Symphony Orchestra’s upcoming season, visit https://www.princetonsymphony.org.
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