It's the war that came to be known in the United States as "The Big One."
And 2025 will mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II — the deadliest military conflict in history.
Much of New World Symphony's upcoming season will commemorate that anniversary with music written during the war and inspired by it.
It will also mark conductor Stéphane Denève's second season as artistic director of NWS since the orchestra's co-founder Michael Tilson Thomas announced he would step down from the role due to health concerns.
One of the season openers is Tilson Thomas's From the Diary of Anne Frank, a piece that Denève says brought him to tears when he first heard it.
"I was very moved because MTT [Tilson Thomas] has been able to really capture the intensity of this amazing testimony, Anne Frank and her diary," he says.
Another piece that will be featured next season — one with a chilling history — is the opera The Kaiser of Atlantis.
It was written around 1943 by composer Victor Ullmann with a libretto by Peter Kien while they were both imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt.
The opera survived them both. Ullmann and Kien would later perish in Auschwitz.
Denève says the fact that the piece — which he describes as brimming with humor and love for life — could be written in such a hellish place is "one more proof of the resilience of humanity."
He says he hopes that New World Symphony can help the audience reflect upon the lasting impact of World War II and deliver what he calls a "message of peace."
"An orchestra is a model of society that shows that people from different backgrounds, different origins, different religions — can actually be together, listen to each other respectfully, be in tune with each other," he said. "And, at the end, create beauty together."
For more information about the 2024-2025 season, go to the New World Symphony website.
This story was produced by WLRN, South Florida’s only public radio station at 91.3 FM, as part of a content sharing partnership with The Biscayne Times. Read more at WLRN.org.