February: The 19 Best Concerts in NYC

An Emily Dickinson song cycle, a protest against the far-right, and a reckoning of the American sound.

ODEA covers NYC’s classical and experimental music scene—monthly concert picks worth your time, researched and curated so you don’t hear about them a week too late. Subscribe for free.

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February in New York is a test of will. The novelty of the first snow is long gone, replaced by an unrelenting, cold reality where daylight is in short supply and your resolutions feel like a lot more work than anticipated. This month, the classical music calendar seems to get it. It’s leaning into the discomfort and even finding beauty in it.

You might find yourself at the Church of the Ascension, where tenor Miles Mykkanen—fresh off opening the Metropolitan Opera’s season in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay—takes the solo role in Zoltán Kodály’s Psalmus Hungaricus. It’s a visceral lament shaped by the political trauma of post-WWI Hungary that the church’s lofted space only intensifies. For a less traditional immersion, you could go full sensory deprivation and sit in darkness for an hour while twenty-four musicians play Georg Friedrich Haas’s in vain. Haas wrote it in 2000, unsettled by the resurgence of a far-right coalition entering government in Austria. The music tries to claw its way upward, but it’s dragged back down by clashing, out of tune harmonies that refuse to let it rise.

At Carnegie Hall, the Dover Quartet pairs Dvořák’s “American” Quartet with two New York premieres by Chickasaw composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate. It’s a dialogue between two different perspectives on the American sound: Dvořák, the 1890s visitor, attempting to capture a national spirit borrowing from Black spirituals and Native American melodies he encountered in Iowa, and Tate, a contemporary voice writing from a perspective that has been rooted here all along.

If all of that feels like more confrontation than you're ready for, the month offers gentler refuges. Richard Goode and Anthony McGill team up at Town Hall for an afternoon of late Brahms and Schubert that shows off the warm, liquidy sound of the clarinet. And the New York Chamber Players perform Tchaikovsky and Wagner for anyone looking to spend Valentine’s Day in a room full of romantic longing.

What follows is a guide to February’s most compelling performances, the ones that reward the effort of leaving your apartment in winter.

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The Concerts

Top Picks

What I’d prioritize if you’re only seeing one or two concerts this month.

Voices of Ascension: Brahms, Kodály, Duruflé

Church of the Ascension, Greenwich Village · Thu, Feb 5, 7:30pm

If you’re more orchestra-leaning, choral concerts can feel like one of three things: ancient, overly familiar, or seasonal. Messiah season, requiems, you get the idea. This night is the exception. Voices of Ascension is doing three big pieces you almost never hear live, and they’re bringing the full apparatus: chorus, orchestra, and soloists who matter.

You’ll hear Brahms’s Nänie, a lush meditation on mortality that gets overlooked while everyone fixates on his symphonies. Then there’s Zoltán Kodály’s Psalmus Hungaricus, written in the post-World War I emotional wreckage and very much not interested in being polite. Tenor Miles Mykkanen is the soloist, and yes, he’s the guy who just opened the Metropolitan Opera season in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. The evening closes with Maurice Duruflé’s Messe ‘cum jubilo’, which is scored for orchestra and a chorus of 30 baritones singing in unison.

Go if: you want rare gems, big sound, and a reason to feel superior in your group chat.

Juilliard String Quartet

High School of Fashion Industries, Chelsea · Sat, Feb 7, 7:30pm

You don’t usually get to hear one of the world’s most famous quartets in a high school auditorium in Chelsea. That’s part of the charm. Juilliard String Quartet shows up on the Mann Series every year and reminds you that chamber music doesn’t need velvet or chandeliers to hit hard.

This year’s program is heavy. You have Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 7 in F-sharp minor, Op. 108—a short, jagged, and deeply personal work written in memory of his late wife—paired with the monumental Beethoven String Quartet in A minor, Op. 132. The latter is famous for its “Heiliger Dankgesang” (Holy Song of Thanksgiving), a movement Beethoven wrote after a brush with death that some consider the most spiritual twenty minutes in the history of music. Bridging the gap is a new work by New York’s own Michelle Ross, whose Birds on the Moon provides a contemporary palate cleanser between the titans.

Program:

• Shostakovich — String Quartet No. 7 in F-sharp minor, Op. 108

• Bach — Prelude in E-flat major, BWV 852 (arr. for string quartet by Michelle Ross)

• Michelle Barzel Ross — Birds on the Moon (NYC Premiere)

• Beethoven — String Quartet in A minor, Op. 132

Go if: you want a big, serious quartet program in a setting that feels very New York.

Dover Quartet. Credit: Roy Cox.

Dover Quartet

Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall, Midtown · Tue, Feb 10, 7:30pm

The Dover Quartet is one of those groups that justifies the heaping amount of praise they get like being called “one of the greatest quartets of the last 100 years.” They’re coming to Carnegie with a program that starts in a place of total vulnerability, opening with a Mendelssohn String Quartet in F minor that’s twenty-five minutes of raw grief written right after his sister died.

From there, the night opens up into a much wider lens on the American landscape. Dover pairs Dvořák’s famous 1893 “American” quartet, which was his outsider’s attempt to capture the spirit of the Midwest, with New York premieres by Chickasaw composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate. Tate’s Woodland Songs is especially tactile, using strings to mimic everything from the frantic energy of squirrels to the quiet grace of a deer. It’s a beautiful way to see the American canon expand, moving from Dvořák’s borrowed melodies to a voice that has been rooted here all along.

Program:

• Mendelssohn — String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 80

• Pura Fé — Rattle Songs (orch. Jerod Impichcha̲achaaha’ Tate) (NY Premiere, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall)

• Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate — Abokkoli’ Taloowa’ (Woodland Songs) (NY Premiere; co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall)

• Dvořák — String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, “American”

Go if: you want to hear a quartet good enough to back up the hype while they show you the many layers of the American sound.

Joyce DiDonato, Time for Three. Credit: Lorenzo Cisi

Joyce DiDonato & Time for Three

Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall, Midtown · Thu, Feb 19, 8pm

Emily Dickinson’s poems look deceptively simple until you sit with them long enough to realize they’re operating on multiple levels at once. Playful and death-obsessed, contained and wild. Pulitzer winner Kevin Puts built a semi-staged song cycle around them called Emily—No Prisoner Be, and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato is bringing it to Carnegie with string trio Time for Three. These four have been collaborating long enough to rack up multiple Grammys for Puts’s Triple Concerto, and DiDonato has been a knockout in his opera The Hours. Semi-staged means you get more than standing and singing, which fits Dickinson’s restless energy.

Go if: you’re an Emily Dickinson fan or just want to see what happens when opera meets a genre-fluid string trio.

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Solo and Chamber Music

Smaller forces, tightly curated programs.

Sonnambula

Museum of Arts & Design (MAD), Columbus Circle · Sun, Feb 8, 11am

GatherNYC is the weekly Sunday morning move where you show up for the coffee and pastries and leave feeling like you got your dose of culture. This week it’s Sonnambula, the ensemble-in-residence at The Frick Collection, playing music built around the viola da gamba, basically a fretted cello with a warm, voicey sound.

Their Passing Fancy: Beauty in a Moment of Chaos program digs into early 1600s music. Fantasias that drift in and out of focus, dance tunes with sharp little turns, and psalms that start serene and end up gripping you by the collar. It’s old music, but won’t feel like it belongs behind glass.

Go if: you’re curious what early-1600s music sounds like when it lands in the present tense.

Njioma Grevious.

Njioma Grevious, Violin

Merkin Hall, Kaufman Music Center, Upper West Side · Tue, Feb 10, 2pm

Njioma Grevious had an absurd 2023-2024: she won the Avery Fisher Career Grant, took first at the Sphinx Competition, and swept the Concert Artists Guild prize. The Washington Classical Review said her playing “seemed to stop time,” and Merkin Hall is a great place for that to happen.

Her Tuesday matinee program is wide ranging. Bach sets the tone, then Perkinson’s Just Blues loosens the collar with bendy double stops. Tchaikovsky’s Scherzo adds some bite while his Melodie stretches out into a long singing line. After Mozart’s E minor sonata, she dives into the “Free but Lonely” world of the F-A-E sonata—a collaborative work by Schumann and Brahms based on a musical code for independence and solitude. Closing the afternoon is Prokofiev’s Second Sonata, a big, bright showpiece that’s still feels light on its feet. The program’s all over the map stylistically, but that seems to be her strength.

Program:

• Bach – Sonata No. 2 selections

• Perkinson – Blues Forms | Just Blues

• Tchaikovsky – Scherzo, Op. 42

• Tchaikovsky – Melodie, Op 42

• Mozart – Violin Sonata in E Minor K. 304

• Schumann – Intermezzo from F-A-E Sonata

• Brahms – Scherzo from F-A-E Sonata

• Messiaen – Theme & Variations

• Prokofiev – Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 2 D Major Op. 94

Go if: you want a midday concert that feels like a tour of what the violin does best.

The Escher String Quartet

Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center · Tue, Feb 10, 7:30pm

They’re named after M. C. Escher, the Dutch graphic artist famous for those architectural drawings of stairs that loop forever. That’s the pitch for a great string quartet anyway: four people playing different lines that lock together so cleanly it feels like a magic trick.

The program is a classics-and-new-music sandwich. Mozart’s “Prussian” quartet is the friendly opener that lets the cello get the spotlight, more than usual. Then there’s a new viola quintet by Chris Rogerson with Paul Neubauer as the extra voice, adding a darker, woodier layer to the sound. They finish with Antonín Dvořák’s Op. 106, late-career Dvořák in full glow, the kind of piece that makes the room feel warmer even if it’s February.

Program:

• Mozart — Quartet in D major for Strings, K. 575, “Prussian”

• Chris Rogerson — New Work for Two Violins, Two Violas, and Cello (CMS Co-Commission)

• Dvořák — Quartet in G major for Strings, Op. 106

Go if: you’re ready for some meticulous, immersive chamber music in the city’s best sounding room.

Music From Japan Festival 2026

Scandinavia House/Victor Borge Hall, Murray Hill · Wed, Feb 12, 7pm

Music From Japan has reached its 51st season, which is a pretty incredible run for an organization dedicated to music that is the antithesis of “easy listening.” This year’s residency features the Momenta Quartet—the group you hire when the score looks like a topographical map—navigating a dense landscape of six composers.

The program is a survey of the Japanese quartet tradition, ranging from Somei Satoh’s ethereal, 1990s-era minimalism to a pair of world premieres by Shintaro Shibayama and Michiru Nakamura. It’s a three hour deep dive into the country’s most rigorous compositional minds, punctuated by a post concert forum for those needing to decompress.

Go if: you want to witness the heavyweights of contemporary music prove that the string quartet is still a radical medium.

Richard Goode, Piano, Sarah Shafer, Soprano, Anthony McGill, Clarinet

The Town Hall, Midtown · Sun, Feb 22, 2pm

Piano legend Richard Goode and NY Phil principal clarinetist Anthony McGill are teaming up for a heavy pour of late-period Brahms and peak Schubert. The program centers on the Brahms Clarinet Sonatas, which the composer wrote after he’d supposedly “retired” but realized he couldn’t quit the clarinet’s elusive sound. Soprano Sarah Shafer joins for the grand finale of The Shepherd on the Rock, which acts as a landscape painting in sound capturing the exact second winter isolation melts into spring.

Program:

• Schubert and Brahms — Selected Lieder (Shafer and Goode)

• Brahms — Clarinet Sonata Op. 120 No. 1 in F minor

• Brahms — Selected Piano Pieces

• Brahms — Clarinet Sonata Op. 120 No. 2 in E-Flat

• Schubert — The Shepherd on the Rock

Go if: you’re into Brahms, Schubert, and a clarinet sound as smooth as top-shelf whiskey.

Leonkoro Quartet. Credit: Co Merz.

Leonkoro Quartet: Role Models

Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, Midtown · Thu, Feb 26, 7:30pm

After cleaning up the European competition circuit, the Berlin-based Leonkoro Quartet is back in New York to make their Carnegie debut. They seem to be picking their biggest influences hence the “role model” title.

They start with the Carnegie premiere of composer Henriëtte Bosmans. A 20th-century Dutch powerhouse effectively ghosted by history until now, her work is the long overdue correction to the canon. Then it’s teenage Mendelssohn in full adrenaline rush. His A minor quartet is built around a single, obsessive question: “Ist es wahr?” (“Is it true?”), with violins that sounds less like polite parlor players and more like sopranos on the verge of a breakdown.

After intermission comes Schubert’s Death and the Maiden, a visceral, seductive negotiation with the afterlife, written while he was dealing with the reality of syphilis. If you’re going to make a Carnegie debut, that’s a pretty good way to leave a mark.

Program:

• Bosmans — String Quartet

• Mendelssohn — String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 13

• Schubert — String Quartet in D Minor, D. 810, “Death and the Maiden”

Go if: you want to catch a young quartet right as the hype becomes real.

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Orchestral

Full symphony concerts, chamber orchestras, and large ensemble programs.

18th Annual Black History Month Celebration: “American Landscapes”

Aaron Davis Hall at City College, Harlem · Thu, Feb 5, 7pm · Free with RSVP

The Harlem Chamber Players have been a neighborhood treasure for nearly twenty years, mostly because they’ve mastered the art of making the classical canon feel like it truly belongs to the community. Their "American Landscapes" program is a panorama where different histories share the same frame, featuring a lineup of entirely living composers.

It opens with Adolphus Hailstork’s Sonata da Chiesa, a spiritual journey for strings that mirrors a choral Mass, weaving tonal counterpoint through chorales and syncopated movements. Chen Yi follows with Shuo, her punchy, saturated writing that never sits still for long, and a world premiere by Eddie Venegasa who steps out as a soloist for his own string nonet. It concludes with Trevor Weston’s The People Could Fly, featuring solo violin, narrator, and dancers from the Harlem School of the Arts to bring the legendary African American folktale to life.

Program:

• Adolphus Hailstork — Sonata da Chiesa

• Chen Yi — Shuo

• Eddie Venegas — Viaje de Cantos (World Premiere)

• Trevor Weston — The People Could Fly

Go if: you want a free concert that feels like a real civic event.

New York Classical Players: Tchaikovsky & Wagner

W83 Auditorium, Upper West Side · Sat, Feb 14, 7:30pm · Free with RSVP

If your Valentine’s Day plans currently involve fighting for a 8pm reservation that’s doubled its prices for the night, consider this concert a solid pre-dinner move. The New York Classical Players are doing what they do best—staging a high drama, zero cost (okay, $20 suggested donation) concert that hits all the Romantic pressure points.

You’ve got cellist Mark Kosower taking on Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme, and Wagner’s Liebestod, the literal “Love-Death” music from Tristan und Isolde. Usually, Wagner sounds like a 100-person wall of sound that could knock over a building, but this chamber arrangement by Yoomi Paick trims that sweeping drama to feel more intimate and exposed.

Program:

• Andrew Hsu — Arabesques (premiere)

• Tchaikovsky — Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33

• Tchaikovsky — Pezzo capriccioso, Op. 62

• Wagner — Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde (arr. Yoomi Paick)

Go if: you prefer your Valentine’s Day drama on stage rather than at the host stand.

Parlando: in vain

Merkin Hall, Kaufman Music Center, Upper West Side · Sun, Feb 22, 3pm

What if the big moment in a concert wasn’t a climax, but the lights going out and staying out. Parlando is taking on Georg Friedrich Haas’s in vain, a staggering hour-long piece where an ensemble of twenty-four play from memory in total darkness, finding each other purely by ear.

Haas wrote it in 2000, rattled by a far-right coalition coming to power in Austria, and the whole piece carries that unease. Tuning systems clash, chords carry beauty until they turn bitter. The music keeps trying to claw its way forward, building momentum, losing it, and trying once again. And because you’re sitting there in the dark with everyone else, it stops feeling like “new music” and starts feeling like a group experience.

Go if: you need an hour in the dark to contemplate the state of the world.

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Experimental/Immersive

Cross-genre work, unusual spaces, and concerts that upend expectations.

Composer Portraits: Andrew McIntosh

Miller Theatre, Morningside Heights · Thu, Feb 5, 7:30pm

Andrew McIntosh writes music that sounds like it was scavenged from the woods. Field recordings, rhythms heard in nature, and newly discovered textures. He’s performing his own work on violin and viola alongside Yarn/Wire, the piano/percussion quartet that’s championed new music that doesn’t sound like anyone else. You’re getting a decade’s worth of McIntosh’s work, from 2012’s Hyenas in the Temples of Pleasure (great title, weirder than you’d expect) to Anadiplosis, a brand-new Miller Theatre commission.

Go if: you want contemporary music with a natural feel.

Ephemeral Circuits

Williamsburg Biannual, Williamsburg · Fri, Feb 6, 7pm

I’ve been meaning to get to the Williamsburg Biannual since it opened, and this is the first event that makes it feel like a real plan. The collective counter)induction turns the 10,000-square-foot space into a roaming concert, with soloists posted in corners like Easter eggs.

Expect a standing-room gallery crawl where the music is as industrial as the building. You’ll stumble upon things like moody viola loops or bluesy guitar riffs. But the most intriguing part is Michael Beil’s Key Jack that involves a pianist performing on an invisible, “virtualized” piano while dueling with a set of their own video avatars. Just the kind of high concept experiment that makes for a memorable performance.

Go if: you want a concert that behaves like an art show.

Sam Pluta Big Band

DiMenna Center for Classical Music, Midtown · Thu, Feb 12, 8pm

If the words “Big Band” conjure images of a brass section and matching suits, you’ve got the wrong show in mind. Sam Pluta is running a big band through a live electronics engine, where his laptop reacts as fast as the improvisers around him. This show is a world premiere tied to his album Slays Well with Others, and he’s stacked the lineup with experimental music all-stars.

This concert is presented by Wet Ink Ensemble, a composer-performer experimental music collective that lives for this kind of controlled chaos. Pluta’s electronics dismantle and refract what’s happening acoustically, blurring the line between acoustic instruments and digital production. It’s an hour of immersive music that goes between meticulously scored moments to free range improvisation.

Go if: you want to watch acoustic instruments get an electronic makeover.

Third Coast Percussion and Jlin. Photo Credit: Martine Severin.

Third Coast Percussion, Simone Porter, and Jlin: Strum, Strike, Bend

92NY (Kaufmann Concert Hall), Upper East Side · Fri, Feb 13, 7:30pm

If you’re looking for a Valentine’s Eve that trades sentimentality for something more invigorating, the 92NY has you covered. Strum, Strike, Bend brings together Grammy-winning Third Coast Percussion, the technically formidable violinist Simone Porter, and Jlin, the Gary, Indiana-raised electronic phenom whose work has journeyed from the dance floor to the Pulitzer shortlist.

The program centers on a world premiere from Jlin that pits her mind bending mixes against Third Coast’s clockwork precision. Also on the docket is Lou Harrison’s rarely heard Concerto for Violin with Percussion Orchestra. It’s a dense, rhythmically intricate night of classical music when it gets its hands dirty.

Program:

• Jlin — Please Be Still

• Jessie Montgomery — Lady Justice / Black Justice, The Song

• Tigran Hamasyan — Sonata For Percussion

• Jessie Montgomery (arr. Sean Connors) — Suite from In Color

• Lou Harrison — Concerto for Violin with Percussion Orchestra

• Jlin — New Work for TCP & Jlin (world premiere; 92NY commission)

Go if: you want “classical” that uses sticks, circuits, and muscle.

New York New Music Ensemble

87 Eldridge St (Museum at Eldridge Street), Lower East Side · Mon, Feb 16, 7pm

Only in New York do you get to hear brand new chamber music inside a restored 19th-century synagogue. Museum at Eldridge Street is all stained glass, painted details, and a big barrel-vaulted ceiling that loves to throw everything back at you.

New York New Music Ensemble has been a staple of the city since the ‘70s, and this program is built for a room like this. You’ll hear Alyssa Weinberg’s shimmering, kaleidoscopic textures in Refracted alongside Brittany J. Green’s shift.unravel.BREAK, which does exactly what the title suggests. In between, you’ve got Jacob David Sudol and Michael Hersch for the darker, more knotty stretches, and Paul Wiancko to send you out with something that moves.

The Program:

• Alyssa Weinberg — Refracted

• Jacob David Sudol — sons disperdu

• Michael Hersch — unwrung, apart, always

• Brittany J. Green — shift.unravel.BREAK

• Paul Wiancko — Distant Maneuvers

Go if: you want to hear new music in a room that makes everything sound bigger.

Huang Ruo “A Dust in Time” (NY Premiere)

National Sawdust, Williamsburg · Wed, Feb 18, 6pm (Rescheduled from Jan 25)

Imagine sitting still for an hour while a piece of music builds into something gorgeous, then slowly dismantles itself until you’re back where you started. Silence. Huang Ruo’s A Dust in Time works like those Tibetan sand mandalas monks spend days making before sweeping them away. It’s one continuous arc with no intermission.

You’ll find it either enchanting or maddening, maybe a little bit of both. The program opens with Song of Everlasting Regret featuring mezzo Kelly Clarke and pianist Joanne Kang. Ruo’s music pulls from Chinese folk traditions, noise, and Western classical without ever feeling unfamiliar. He calls it “Dimensionalism,” which okay, sure, sounds a little much until you hear it and realize he’s onto something.

Go if: you’re curious about music that treats time like something you can fold in half.

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You’re probably looking for more than just another season brochure. That’s what ODEA is for. We cover the concerts that don’t always get the glossy previews: string quartets in crypts, operas in downtown theaters, new music in old churches. The ones you usually hear about a week too late. If that sounds like your thing, subscribe, share with a friend, or check out something unexpected.