For 21C’s artists and organizations, the 2025–26 season brings a full lineup of performances and recordings. See highlights of their coming year below (all subject to change).

Purcell’s famous lament “When I am laid in earth” has long been prominent in WARNER CLASSICS artist Joyce DiDonato’s repertoire, but only in 2024 did she first perform Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in its entirety. With Il Pomo d’Oro, conductor Maxim Emelyanychev, and a cast including Fatma Said as Dido’s companion Belinda and Beth Taylor as the Sorceress, DiDonato toured the work to Luxembourg, Madrid, Valencia, Paris, Hamburg and Essen, where the present recording was made. There they were joined by Michael Spyres, who reprised the role of Aeneas after singing it opposite DiDonato’s Dido on a previous Erato recording of Berlioz’s Les Troyens, conducted in 2017 by the late John Nelson. Of this Dido and Aeneas, The Guardian declared: “DiDonato was, as one might expect, magnificent in a role that suits her down to the ground, probing Dido’s desire and anguish with singing of characteristically understated subtlety.” The Times (UK) praised “the superb period instrumentalists and singers of the pan-European ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro,” as “Maxim Emelyanychev demonstrated again what galvanizing energy he has, and what imagination he possesses. Quite simply, I have never heard Purcell – any Purcell – delivered with more wit and character, panache and polish.” [Warner Classics]

SEPTEMBER 2025

Sep 4, 6
Grammy-nominated tenor NICHOLAS PHAN – “one of the world’s most remarkable singers” (The Boston Globe) – opens Art Song Chicago’s 15th anniversary season – formerly Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago – with the 2025 Collaborative Works Festival, performing and curating a pair of concerts exploring the theme “Songs of War and Peace.” As the organization’s founding Artistic Director, Phan leads a roster of over a dozen musicians, performing works by Benjamin Britten, Viet Cuong, Claude Debussy, Gerald Finzi, Jake Heggie, and Kurt Weill. [Chicago]

Sep 5
Celebrating the 90th birthday year of Estonian composer and longtime Järvi family friend Arvo Pärt, conductor PAAVO JÄRVI and the Estonian Festival Orchestra release an album of the composer’s works, combining studio recordings with live performances, all made during the summer 2025 Pärnu Music Festival. The release is timed to anticipate the composer’s birthday the following week. The title track of the album, “Credo,” refers to the work that was premiered by Paavo’s father, Neeme Järvi, in Tallinn, Estonia, in 1968, but was seen as a provocation by the Soviet authorities and quickly banned. It was only after 12 years of censorship, in 1980, that Pärt was able to leave occupied Estonia and set up a new life in Vienna in exile. That same year, Neeme Järvi moved his family to the United States. Paavo Järvi was 18 when he left the country, and 33 when he was finally able to return, after Estonian independence was achieved. [Alpha Classics]

Sep 5, 6
Grammy-winning conductor ALAN GILBERT launches his seventh season as Chief Conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra (NDREO) with an Opening Night program featuring Gilmore Artist Kirill Gerstein. After joining the Russian-American pianist for Rachmaninoff’s “Paganini” Rhapsody and Richard Strauss’s youthful Burleske, Gilbert concludes the program with Mahler’s First Symphony, the “Titan.” It was their recording of the same composer’s Seventh that prompted MusicWeb International to characterize Gilbert and the NDREO as “selfless ambassadors for Mahler,” in a review that concluded: “Thanks to the expert pacing of Alan Gilbert, … we are in good hands.” [Hamburg, Germany]

Sep 11–20
The LOUISVILLE ORCHESTRA and its Grammy-winning Music Director, TEDDY ABRAMS, embark on the latest iteration of “In Harmony – The Commonwealth Tour of the Louisville Orchestra,” sponsored by the Kentucky Legislature. This will be the first time the tour stretches over a consecutive two-week period, and because several of the destinations are in Kentucky’s Appalachian region, Copland’s Appalachian Spring will be prominently featured. Other programmed works include the “Hoe-Down” from Copland’s ballet Rodeo, selections from Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings and John Adams’s Shaker Loops, inaugural Creators Corps member Lisa Bielawa’s Home, arrangements of Shaker tunes by current Creators Corps member Chelsea Komschlies, and a new work by her fellow Creators Corps composer Anthony R. Green. [Sep 11: Harrodsburg, KY; Sep 12: Beattyville, KY; Sep 13: Hazard, KY; Sep 18: Campbellsville, KY; Sep 19: Corbin, KY; Sep 20: Harlan, KY]

Sep 13; May 9
Pianist LARA DOWNES is devoting her 2025–26 season to a groundbreaking initiative titled The Declaration Project, which celebrates the 250th anniversary of the U.S. by reflecting on the nation’s founding principles of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness with a mosaic of music, personal narrative, and video, documenting its collective hopes, struggles, and untold histories. The multimedia world premiere performance of The Declaration Project – with composers Valerie Coleman, Arturo O’Farrill, and Christopher Tin as creative collaborators – takes place at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in July 2026, but that event represents only the tip of a huge iceberg of ongoing collaborative partnerships that began in fall 2024. Since then, and continuing throughout the coming season, she is traveling to urban and rural communities nationwide, in partnership with a broad consortium of performing arts, educational and civic institutions, to carry out immersive community-activation residencies centered on reflection, deep listening and self-expression with the goal of gathering what she calls “a kaleidoscopic array of American voices to actively reimagine the promise of our future.” A collection of field recordings from these events will also be released on an album titled Hold These Truths, coming next July on the Pentatone label to coincide with the Lincoln Center premiere. As Downes says: “The Declaration Project is taking the pulse of America in big cities and small towns, finding common ground and shared experience through the gateway of music and the honesty of personal dialogue.” Co-commissioners of the project include Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, KMFA classical radio in Austin – which will sponsor a live in-studio performance with Downes on September 13 – and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, among many others. Downes’s other collaborative partners throughout the season include MASS MoCA, the LOS ANGELES CHAMBER ORCHESTRA, The Juilliard School, the Kaufman Music Center/Lucy Moses School, the Knoxville Symphony, and Cal Performances, where she will perform a Declaration Project-themed concert on May 9 with guests including folk legend Judy Collins, Grammy-winning singer and poet Tarriona “Tank” Ball, Invoke quartet, and the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir. [Sep 13: Austin; May 9: Berkeley, CA] [Pentatone]

Sep 17, 18
Always “electrifying in front of an orchestra” (Los Angeles Times), conductor RAFAEL PAYARE, Music Director of both the SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (Montreal Symphony Orchestra/OSM), opens the latter orchestra’s season with performances of Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust, following up on their performances of the same composer’s Symphonie fantastique on tour in Europe in November 2024. Payare and the OSM are also planning a fall release featuring the music of Berlioz. The concerts feature mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill, tenor Andrew Staples, baritone Sir Willard White, bass-baritone Ashley Riches, the OSM chorus, and the Petits Chanteurs de Laval children’s chorus. [Montreal] [Pentatone]

Sep 20–May 2
Multiple Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble CHANTICLEER – lauded by The Boston Globe as “breathtaking in its accuracy of intonation, purity of blend, of color and swagger of style” – kicks off its new season of performances at home in the Bay Area and on tour across the U.S. and in Europe with the new program “Our American Journey.” Celebrating America’s 250th year of independence, the program showcases the diverse voices, songs, harmonies, and rhythms of the country’s shared musical heritage, exploring how those voices influenced each other and impact the present day. The cornerstone of the program is a new commission by composer Trevor Weston, demonstrating the link between traditional American hymnody and African American spirituals. Other repertoire traces the progression of the American choral tradition from Black Gospel quartets to shape-note singing to barbershop quartets and vocal jazz. The program also includes settings of traditional American Bluegrass tunes and beloved folk songs, as well as arrangements of more contemporary American classics. [Sep 20: Berkeley, CA; Sep 21: Sacramento; Sep 23: Mill Valley, CA; Sep 25: Santa Clara, CA; Sep 28: San Francisco; Oct 9: South Bend, IN; Oct 23: Wilmington, NC; Oct 26: Morrow, GA; Oct 30: Greenville, PA; Feb 22: Ellicott City, MD; March 1: Toronto, ON; April 15: Portland, OR; April 20, 21: NYC/Kaufman; April 22: NYC/Trinity; April 28: Houston, TX; May 2: Lodi, CA; additional dates TBA]

Sep 20, 27; Nov 7
This fall, MacArthur Fellow ALISA WEILERSTEIN – “a cellist of explosive emotional energy” (The New York Times) – undertakes a succession of key firsts in her multi-season solo cello series, “FRAGMENTS.” After the European premiere of FRAGMENTS 1: “Wonder” at De Doelen in Rotterdam, she gives the UK premieres of FRAGMENTS 1: “Wonder” and FRAGMENTS 2: “Tumult” at London’s Southbank Centre, where she is artist in residence, followed by the New York premiere of FRAGMENTS 4: “Labyrinth” at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Designed to rethink the concert experience, the project sees her weave together the 36 movements of Bach’s solo cello suites with 27 new commissions to make six concert programs in multisensory productions all directed by ELKHANAH PULITZER. Weilerstein’s first account of the complete cycle, at Charleston’s Spoleto Festival USA, was hailed as “the most awesome classical-music event this season … . Layering on stage direction at Sottile Theatre by Elkhanah Pulitzer, scenic and lighting design by Seth Reiser, and costumes by Molly Irelan, Weilerstein crafted her FRAGMENTS into a creation you literally had to see.”  (Classical Voice North America). [Sep 20: Rotterdam, Netherlands; Sep 27: London; Nov 7: NYC/CH]

Sep 24, 26
WARNER CLASSICS artist Pene Pati, the first Samoan tenor to have a Metropolitan Opera debut and the first to perform on Europe’s top opera stages, makes his North American solo recital debut in the Board of Officers Room at New York’s Park Avenue Armory. Praised for his “round and sunshine-filled voice” (Le Monde), the celebrated tenor will also release an album of Neapolitan songs, joined by the Il Pomo d’Oro orchestra, in fall of 2025, following up on his 2024 aria collection, Nessun Dorma, and 2022 self-titled debut. [NY/PAA] [Warner Classics]

Sep 25
“A conductor for the future” with “a flourishing career” (The New York Times), ANTHONY PARNTHER returns to the New York Philharmonic to lead its celebratory season-opening gala, featuring three-time Grammy-winning jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant. [NYC/DGH]

Sep 27–Nov 12
As Music Director and Royal Court Kapellmeister of the Royal Swedish Opera, ALAN GILBERT conducts the company premiere of Dvořák’s Rusalka, in a new production by Netia Jones, Associate Director of London’s Royal Opera. Gilbert’s past highlights at the Stockholm house include Wagner’s Parsifal, of which Opera magazine declared: “Musically, the performance was outstanding.” [Sep 27, 30; Oct 4, 10; Nov 4, 8, 12: Stockholm]

OCTOBER 2025

Oct 2
“A pianist of magisterial elegance, power, and insight” (The New York Times), LEIF OVE ANDSNES launches the 15th season of Montreal’s Bourgie Hall with a solo recital. His program combines the music of Palestrina, Beethoven, and Robert Schumann with two religious works by Liszt, as featured on the celebrated Norwegian pianist’s recent Sony Classical release, Liszt: Via Crucis & Solo Piano Works, named one of “the best classical albums of 2025 so far,” by The Times of London. [Montreal]

Oct 2–April 2
The DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (DSO), celebrating its 125th anniversary this season, performs two Mahler symphonies under the baton of Music Director FABIO LUISI to bookend the season. In the fall, Luisi leads performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, featuring soprano soloist Sofia Fomina. Also on the program is Haydn’s witty and elegant “Oxford” Symphony No. 92, which the composer conducted at Oxford University in 1791 to celebrate his honorary Doctor of Music degree. This symphony is of special significance to the DSO’s history as it was featured on the orchestra’s first concert on May 22, 1900 (Oct 2, 5). In the spring, Mahler’s Fourth will be reprised on tour in California, along with Schumann’s Piano Concerto performed by soloist Hélène Grimaud (March 31–April 2). [Oct 2, 5: Dallas; March 31: Palm Desert, CA; April 1: Santa Barbara, CA; April 2: Costa Mesa, CA]

Oct 3, 4, 5
“A brilliant musician and an extraordinary visionary” (The Wall Street Journal), Grammy-winning French pianist PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD celebrates the centennial of his late teacher and collaborator Pierre Boulez in concerts with the New York Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen. In addition to joining them for Debussy’s Fantaisie, Aimard performs selections from Boulez’s Notations for solo piano in dialogue with the great avant-gardist’s own orchestrations. It was with Salonen that Aimard previously recorded a complete Bartók concerto cycle, scoring a five-star review in the UK’s Sunday Times, which found the set “revelatory.” [NYC/DGH]

Oct 4–March 1
The DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (DSO) presents the 2025 DSO Gala, in this, the orchestra’s 125th anniversary season (Oct 4). Music Director FABIO LUISI leads the orchestra in Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, which Sir Georg Solti conducted at the first subscription concert of his tenure as Music Director of the DSO in the early 1960s. The program culminates with Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, featuring the DSO’s new Artist-In-Residence, Leonidas Kavakos. This once-a-season fundraising event benefits the DSO’s education and outreach initiatives including the Young Strings and Kim Noltemy Young Musicians programs. Kavakos has a long history of collaboration with the DSO, dating back to his first appearance as soloist on Paganini’s Second Violin Concerto in 1990. Following his performance at the annual Gala concert, he returns to lead the orchestra from the podium in an all-Russian program: Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto with Alexander Kerr as soloist and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition as arranged by Ravel (Feb 27–March 1). Kavakos will also collaborate with DSO musicians in chamber music performances throughout the season. [Oct 4; Feb 27, Feb 28; March1: Dallas]

Oct 5–April 12
Highlights of CARAMOOR’s fall/spring season, now called the Rosen House Concert Series, with performances in the intimate surroundings of the Rosen House Music Room, include South African cellist, singer, and composer Abel Selaocoe with an eclectic program that includes three New York premieres of works by himself, Michel van der Aa and Ben Nobuto (Oct 5); celebrated Baroque orchestra The English Concert led by artistic director Harry Bicket (Nov 9); Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson with a solo recital of Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert (March 22); and the Junction Trio – violinist Stefan Jackiw, pianist Conrad Tao, and cellist Jay Campbell – performing music by Tao along with trios by Ravel and Schumann (April 12). [Oct 5; Nov 9; March 22; April 12: Katonah, NY]

Oct 9, 10, 11
Grammy-winning Russian pianist DANIIL TRIFONOV – “without question the most astounding young pianist of our age” (The Times of London) – reprises his “big, warm, noble interpretation” (Classical Voice) of Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto with The Cleveland Orchestra and Music Director Franz Welser-Möst. [Cleveland, OH]

Oct 10–25
Grammy-winning American classical singer JULIA BULLOCK – “one of today’s smartest, most arresting vocalists in any genre” (NPR) – returns to the Royal Opera House to sing the role of Pamina in David McVicar’s production of The Magic Flute, led by French conductor Marie Jacquot in her Covent Garden debut. [Oct 10, 12, 14, 17, 20, 25: London]

Oct 13, 16, 19
DANIIL TRIFONOV reunites with veteran German baritone Matthias Goerne, with whom he enjoys an “intense affinity” (The New York Times), for North American recitals of Schubert’s three great song cycles. They perform Schwanengesang in Quebec; Winterreise in Toronto; and Die schöne Müllerin in New York, where the concert marks the first of Trifonov’s three appearances of the season at Carnegie Hall. [Oct 13: Quebec, QC; Oct 16: Toronto, ON; Oct 19: NYC/CH]

Oct 16, 17
ALAN GILBERT leads the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra in a pairing of two 20th-century Russian masterworks – Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite (1919 version) and Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony – with two late-Romantic classics: Richard Strauss’s tone poem Don Juan, and Saint-Saëns’s Third Violin Concerto, for which they will be joined by JOSHUA BELL. [Hamburg, Germany]

Oct 16–Nov 22
Known as “one of America’s best at commissioning new works,” (D Magazine), the DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (DSO) and Music Director FABIO LUISI continue their longstanding tradition of championing contemporary composers. Since presenting its first world premiere in 1912, the DSO has amassed an impressive musical legacy of more than 100 world premieres and commissions, with six more being performed in 2025–26. First up is an expansive work for orchestra, chorus and four vocalists, commissioned by the DSO from former Composer-in-Residence Angélica Negrón in honor of this 125^thanniversary season. Luisi and the orchestra are joined by the Dallas Symphony Chorus to premiere Negrón’s new work, For Everything You Keep Losing, alongside Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, featuring pianist Inon Barnatan, and Morton Gould’s Latin-American Symphonette (Oct 16–18). The other two Luisi-conducted world premieres in 2025–26 are both on the same program: Dallas-based composer Jonathan Cziner’s Clarinet Concerto featuring DSO Principal Clarinet Gregory Raden; and composer/pianist Moni (Jasmine) Guo’s new work titled “the sound of where i came from”乡音, which was commissioned by the League of American Orchestras with the generous support of the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Orchestral Commissions Program for women composers (Nov 20–22). [Oct 16, 17, 18; Nov 20, 21, 22: Dallas]

Oct 18–Oct 23
Following a tour of the EU with the Estonian Festival Orchestra, Opus Klassik 2019 Conductor of the Year PAAVO JÄRVI takes the orchestra to Carnegie Hall for its North American debut, all in celebration of the 90th birthday year of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, holder of Carnegie Hall’s Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair for 2025–2026. Joined by violinists Midori and Hans Christian Aavik, with Nico Muhly on piano, and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, they kick off Carnegie’s seven-concert retrospective of Pärt’s music with a program comprising Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten, Perpetuum mobile, La Sindone, Adam’s Lament, Tabula Rasa, Fratres, Swansong, and Credo. Says the conductor, “I believe that Estonian culture is best represented through music which naturally expresses our national voice. Our country may be small, but Arvo Pärt’s iconic music is loved worldwide.” [Oct 18: Vienna; Oct 19: Zurich; Oct 20: Hamburg, Germany; Oct 23: NYC/CH]

Oct 23, 30, 31
Grammy- and ECHO Klassik Award-winning conductor FABIO LUISI, in addition to his role as Music Director of the DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, also serves as Principal Conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra (DNSO), which celebrates its centennial this season. Following summer performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the BBC Proms, Luisi leads the orchestra in Danish composer Rued Langgaard’s most radical work: Music of the Spheres (1916–18) for soprano, mixed choir, and two orchestras. Also on the program is Hans Abrahamsen’s orchestration of three of Langgaard’s Gitanjali Hymns for piano, inspired by Indian poetry. In addition, the performance provides a preview of Luisi and the orchestra’s upcoming collaboration with Deutsche Grammophon to record Schoenberg’s complete orchestral works, honoring the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth; his Ode to Napoleon and A Survivor from Warsaw round out the program (Oct 23). A week later, the orchestra’s anniversary celebrations continue with a performance of another towering work, Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. For the performance, Luisi and the DNSO will be joined by the Danish National Concert Choir, the BBC Singers, the Copenhagen Boys Choir, sopranos Jacquelyn Wagner, Valentina Farcas, and Liv Redpath; mezzo-sopranos Wiebke Lehmkuhl and Jasmin Etezadzadeh; tenor David Butt Philip; baritone Christoph Pohl; and bass David Steffens (Oct 30, 31). [Oct 23, 30, 31: Copenhagen]

Oct 24, 25
The LOUISVILLE ORCHESTRA (LO)’s groundbreaking Creators Corps initiative is a radically new, community-focused model for collaborating with symphony orchestras in the 21st century. For the first of the six Classics Series programs that he will conduct in 2025–26, LO Music Director TEDDY ABRAMS leads the world premiere of inaugural Creators Corps member Lisa Bielawa’s LO-commissioned Violin Concerto, written for soloist Tessa Lark, who previously joined the LO on one of the 2022 iterations of the “In Harmony” tour. Also on the program are world premieres from current Creators Corps members Anthony R. Green and Chelsea Komschlies, and Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony. [Louisville]

Oct 24, 25
ANTHONY PARNTHER conducts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s world premiere performances of Tamboo-Bamboo Concerto, a new commission from English composer Matthew Rooke, with its dedicatee, timpanist Paul Philbert, as soloist. Parnther bookends Rooke’s new concerto with two third symphonies: Panufnik’s Sinfonia Sacra and Beethoven’s mighty “Eroica.” It was in Beethoven that the conductor previously impressed The Guardian with his “high voltage interpretation that maintained a fine balance between detail and elan,” of which “the finale was edge-of-your-seat stuff.” [Glasgow]

Oct 25, 26
The LOS ANGELES CHAMBER ORCHESTRA continues its multi-season focus on the music of Brahms with a Romantic coupling of the composer’s First Piano Concerto, featuring Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin – a “performer of near-superhuman technical prowess” (The New York Times) – with Louise Farrenc’s Second Symphony. Music Director Jaime Martín, the “charismatic conductor [who] is a real musician’s musician” (The Guardian), conducts. [Los Angeles]

Oct 28–Nov 1
Long celebrated as “a cellist with something to say” (Gramophone), INBAL SEGEV participates in the International Cello Festival of Canada, performing Beethoven’s Second Cello Sonata and more. For the opening concert of the festival, she joins conductor Anne Manson to perform C.P.E. Bach’s Cello Concerto in A for the opening concert of the festival. Segev joins an international roster of cello soloists for the festival, including Colin Carr, Denise Djokic, Santiago Cañón-Valencia, Matthias Bartolomey, and Cameron Crozman. [Oct 28-Nov 1: Winnipeg]

Oct 29–Nov 12
WARNER CLASSICS artist Beatrice Rana – “an artist of truly reflective grace … combining poetry and great skill, among the most gifted musicians of her generation” (Gramophone) – returns to the Carnegie Hall mainstage on the heels of an album of Bach Keyboard Concertos released this past spring with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta. In her 2022 Carnegie debut recital, Rana performed Book I of Debussy’s famously demanding études, and for her return engagement she performs Book II, six more pieces that, according to the composer, underscore “the fact that the portals of music can only be opened with formidable hands.” Also included on the program is Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 6, selections from the same composer’s Romeo and Juliet, and Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. Leading up to the Carnegie recital, Rana performs the same program in Boston’s Celebrity Series. [Oct 29: Cleveland; Nov 1: Morrow, GA; Nov 2: Chicago; Nov 4: Montreal; Nov 6: Forth Worth, TX; Nov 8: Boston; Nov 10: Philadelphia; Nov 12: NYC/CH]

Oct 30; Nov 1, 2
Conductor PAAVO JÄRVI returns to the Toronto Symphony, leading a program that pairs Debussy’s serene Prélude à l’aprés-midi d’un Faune with Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony, inspired by the natural beauty of the composer’s native Finland. Rounding out the program is Estonian composer Tõnu Kõrvits’s Concerto for Accordion and Orchestra featuring accordionist Ksenija Sidorova. [Toronto]

Oct 30–Dec 13
As the Music Director and Concertmaster of San Francisco’s New Century Chamber Orchestra, DANIEL HOPE leads the ensemble from the violin during two Bay Area tours this fall. Their first program sees Hope – a violinist whose “thriving solo career” is “built on inventive programming and a probing interpretive style” (The New York Times) – undertake the solo roles in both Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Dawn by Bulgarian-British composer Dobrinka Tabakova (Oct 30–Nov 2), while their second features the San Francisco Girls Chorus in seasonal selections by Elgar, Rutter, Britten, Jake Heggie, Nico Muhly, and others (Dec 11–13). [Oct 30: Berkeley, CA; Oct 31: Vallejo, CA; Nov 1: San Francisco; Nov 2: San Rafael, CA; Dec 11: Berkeley, CA; Dec 12: Belvedere Tiburon, CA; Dec 13: San Francisco]

NOVEMBER 2025
Nov TBA; Nov 12–Dec 2
PAAVO JÄRVI – embarking on his seventh season as Music Director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich – releases Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 on the Alpha Classics label in October. Marking the second installment – after the Fifth Symphony last season – of a complete cycle that will span the remaining four years of the conductor’s Zürich tenure, the release is followed by multiple live performances of Mahler’s First and Second Symphonies with the Tonhalle, both in Zurich and on tour. The Second “Resurrection” Symphony will be recorded live in concert in Zurich, with soprano soloist Mari Eriksmoen and mezzo-soprano Anna Lucia Richter (Nov 12–14). On tour they perform Symphonies 1 & 2 in residency at the Vienna Musikverein (Nov 21, 22) and Baden-Baden Festspielhaus (Nov 28, 29), followed by further performances of Symphony No. 2 at the Cologne Philharmonie (Dec 1) and Paris Philharmonie (Dec 2) [Alpha Classics] [Nov 12, 13, 14: Zurich; Nov 21, 22: Vienna; Nov 28, 29: Baden-Baden, Germany; Dec 1: Cologne; Dec 2: Paris]

Nov 3, 14, 19
In recitals at London’s Wigmore Hall, D.C.’s Library of Congress, and New York’s 92nd Street Y,  PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD performs Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin, Obukhov’sRévelation, Boulez’s First Piano Sonata, and two works written for the pianist by his close friend Sir George Benjamin: Shadowlines and a new piano duet, for which the English composer joins him on stage. The duet is a Boulez Saal, Wigmore Hall, and Library of Congress co-commission, and the London and D.C. performances represent its UK and American premieres respectively. [Nov 3: London; Nov 14: Washington, D.C.; Nov 19, NYC/92Y]

Nov 5–9
Groundbreaking director ELKHANAH PULITZER, fresh from her Met debut with John Adams’s Antony and Cleopatra in spring 2025, directs the world premiere production of composer-librettist Sarah Kirkland Snider’s first opera, Hildegard, produced by Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) at LA Opera. Snider’s story takes place in 1147, when Hildegard von Bingen, despite the threat of being branded a heretic, decides to document the visions she is receiving from God, enlisting her fellow nun Richardis von Stade to illustrate the manuscript and developing a forbidden romantic attachment to her in the process. The work was commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects and the Aspen Music Festival, and features, along with Pulitzer’s direction, projections designed by multimedia artist and frequent Snider collaborator Deborah Johnson. Scenic designer Marsha Ginsberg, costume designer Molly Irelan, and lighting designer Pablo Santiago round out the creative team. The work will be reprised at BMP’s 2026 Prototype Festival in January. [Nov 5, 6, 8, 9: Los Angeles]

Nov 6–15
“A true artist and intellectual whose music feeds both your brain and your heart” (Newsweek), Grammy-winning violinist and conductor JOSHUA BELL continues to champion the rediscovered 1943 Violin Concerto by Ukrainian-born composer Thomas de Hartmann. This fall, he performs the work with the New York Philharmonic before giving its Canadian premiere with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, in the first of two programs as the ensemble’s 2025-26 Spotlight Artist. For his collaborations with both orchestras, Bell reunites with Ukrainian-born Finnish conductor Dalia Stasevska, with whom he recently won the Diapason d’Or for his world premiere recording of de Hartmann’s concerto. [Nov 6, 7, 8: NYC/DGH; Nov 13, 15: Toronto, ON]

Nov 6–April 30
ORCHESTRA OF ST. LUKE’S (OSL) – celebrated for its “exceptionally fine and committed music-making” (New York Times) – gives four mainstage performances in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage during the 2025–26 season. Conductor Raphaël Pichon returns for the second season in a row, leading Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with soprano Liv Redpath, mezzo-soprano Beth Taylor, tenor Laurence Kilsby, and bass Alex Rosen as soloists. Also on the program are two rarities: selections from Beethoven’s incidental music for the never-performed play Leonore Prohaska by Johann Friedrich Duncker, and “Persischer Nachtgesang” by Friedrich Silcher, an important early exponent of the German choral tradition, who based the song on a theme from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony (Nov 6). Next, Andrew Manze – Principal Conductor of the NDR Radiophilharmonie from 2014–23 – leads celebrated English Beethoven interpreter Paul Lewis in Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, along with Haydn’s Symphony No. 47, “Palindrome,” and John Adams’s Fearful Symmetries, which OSL commissioned and premiered back in 1988 (Feb 12). Louis Langrée, also returning for the second season in a row, conducts the orchestra in a program of American music by Ives, Ellington, Gershwin, and Bernstein joined by jazz pianist Gerald Clayton (March 26); and Masaaki Suzuki – founder and music director of the Bach Collegium Japan – completes OSL’s Carnegie Hall season conducting violinist Midori in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D, on a program with Mozart’s Don Giovanni Overture and Mendelssohn’s Fourth “Italian” Symphony (April 30). [Nov 6; Feb 12; March 26; April 30: NYC/CH]

Nov 7
Tenor NICHOLAS PHAN releases Rebecca Clarke: The Complete Vocal Works, a multi-disc album on Signum Records. Recorded over the course of two years with Phan’s British colleagues mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately and pianist Anna Tilbrook, the album includes nearly 30 world premiere recordings of unpublished songs. Comprising mostly songs with piano, the album also contains Clarke’s vocal chamber pieces, for which Phan and Whately are joined by violinist Max Baillie, baritone Roderick Williams, soprano Gweneth Ann Rand, and members of the Seattle Chamber Music Society. [Signum Records]

Nov 7
ALISA WEILERSTEIN gives the New York premiere of FRAGMENTS 4: “Labyrinth” at New York’s Carnegie Hall. (see Sep 20) [NYC/CH]

Nov 9
Celebrated Baroque orchestra The English Concert led by artistic director Harry Bicket performs in CARAMOOR’s Rosen House Music Room (see Oct 5). [Katonah, NY]

Nov 9
For his second Carnegie Hall appearance of the season, DANIIL TRIFONOV joins Cristian Mǎcelaru and the Orchestre National de France for two great French piano concertos: Saint-Saëns’s Second and Ravel’s jazz-inflected Piano Concerto in G, in which the pianist recently “delivered technical brilliance and sensitive interaction with the [NDR Elbphilharmonie] orchestra” (Klassik Begeistert, Germany). [NYC/CH]

Nov 20, 21, 22
The DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (DSO) and Music Director FABIO LUISI give the world premieres of Dallas-based composer Jonathan Cziner’s Clarinet Concerto featuring DSO Principal Clarinet Gregory Raden; and composer/pianist Moni (Jasmine) Guo’s new work titled “the sound of where i came from” 乡音, which was commissioned by the League of American Orchestras with the generous support of the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Orchestral Commissions Program for women composers (see Oct 16). [Dallas]

Nov 20–23
“One of the CSO’s most esteemed and popular guest conductors” (Chicago Classical Review), MANFRED HONECK returns to lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a dramatic and immersive performance of the completed portions of Mozart’s Requiem, presented as they may have been heard at the composer’s own funeral. Interwoven with Gregorian chant and additional choral selections by Mozart, Honeck’s signature take on the Requiem captures “the awe, the majesty and the fright this mass is supposed to inspire” (Bachtrack). Works by Beethoven and Haydn open the program. [Nov 20, 21, 22, 23: Chicago]

Nov 21, 22
In 2022, TEDDY ABRAMS’s friend and Curtis Institute classmate Yuja Wang joined the LOUISVILLE ORCHESTRA (LO) for the premiere of Abrams’s Piano Concerto – dedicated to her – which they recorded live for Wang’s Grammy-winning album The American Project. This fall, she returns for a performance of Ligeti’s sole Piano Concerto, which Gramophone praised her for playing with “sly, jazzy exuberance.” The program also includes Wang’s performance of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, and Abrams leading the LO in Bartók’s tour-de-force Concerto for Orchestra, which demands virtuosity from the entire ensemble, from the first violins to the bass trombone. [Louisville]

Nov 25–Jan 25
ALISA WEILERSTEIN performs Britten’s sole Cello Concerto with two top German orchestras, both under the leadership of ALAN GILBERT. She and the conductor perform the formidably challenging work with the Staatskapelle Berlin this fall, before reprising it early next year with Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra. [Nov 25: Berlin; Jan 22, 25: Hamburg, Germany; Jan 23: Lübeck, Germany]

Nov 26, 27
RAFAEL PAYARE takes the podium with the UK’s Philharmonia in Leicester and London, leading Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture and Symphonie fantastique – as heard last fall on tour in Europe with Payare’s Orchestre symphonique de Montréal – along with the London premiere of Philharmonia’s Featured Composer Gabriela Ortiz’s trumpet concerto Altar de Bronce. Celebrated Latin Grammy Award-winning Venezuelan trumpeter Pacho Flores, for whom the concerto was composed, is the featured soloist. [Nov 26: Leicester, UK; Nov 27: London]

DECEMBER 2025

Dec 2, 3
In 2018, Austrian conductor MANFRED HONECK – now embarking on his 18th season as Music Director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO) – was named Artist of the Year by the International Classical Music Awards jury, the same year he and the PSO won a Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance for their recording of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. This season, Honeck and the PSO perform the same work on consecutive nights in Pittsburgh and then at Carnegie Hall, on a program with Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini performed by Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, whom The Wall Street Journal praised for “remarkable technique, dispatched with jaw-dropping panache.” Rounding out the program is the New York premiere of the PSO-commissioned Frozen Dreams by Lera Auerbach. [Dec 2: Pittsburgh; Dec 3: NYC/CH]

Dec 4, 5
Conductor FABIO LUISI joins the NHK Symphony Orchestra, of which he is Chief Conductor, for a December performance featuring the world premiere of the NHK-commissioned Ocean Breaker for orchestra by London-based Japanese composer Dai Fujikura. Also on the program are Franck’s Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra featuring young Israeli pianist Tom Borrow, and Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 3, the “Organ Symphony.” [Tokyo]

Dec 4–7
JULIA BULLOCK joins the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) under the baton of Petr Popelka for the world premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s new CSO-commissioned song cycle, Song of the Reappeared. Written for Bullock by Aucoin – a former CSO Sir Georg Solti Conducting Apprentice and fellow founding core member of the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC*) – the cycle is set to the poetry of Chilean writer Raúl Zurita and explores themes of memory, language and spirituality. [Dec 4, 5, 6, 7: Chicago]

Dec 11, 12, 13
DANIEL HOPE leads the New Century Chamber Orchestra from the violin on a Bay Area tour with a program featuring the San Francisco Girls Chorus in seasonal selections by Elgar, Rutter, Britten, Jake Heggie, Nico Muhly, and others. (See Oct 30) [Dec 11: Berkeley, CA; Dec 12: Belvedere Tiburon, CA; Dec 13: San Francisco]

Dec 13
DANIIL TRIFONOV makes his third and final Carnegie Hall appearance of the season with a mainstage solo recital. This follows the pianist’s numerous previous sold-out Carnegie recitals, after one of which The New York Times hailed him as “one of the most awesome pianists of our time.” [NYC/CH]

Dec 18–Jan 29
ALAN GILBERT returns to the Royal Swedish Opera for Ole Anders Tandberg’s folksy, Swedish-language take on Mozart’s The Magic Flute. During the production’s festive run, Gilbert also kicks off the Royal Swedish Opera Orchestra’s year-long 500th anniversary celebrations with star-studded concerts featuring his interpretation of Beethoven’s incomparable Ninth Symphony and the world premiere of a new commission from Sweden’s Torbjörn Helander. [Opera: Dec 18, 20, 26; Jan 6, 8, 15, 26, 29; concerts: Jan 17, 18: Stockholm]

Dec 31
ANTHONY PARNTHER returns to The Philadelphia Orchestra to conduct a festive concert billed as “the most elegant New Year’s Eve celebration around.” [Philadelphia]

Dec 31; Jan 1
Grammy winner and Musical America’s 2022 Conductor of the Year TEDDY ABRAMS leads the Minnesota Orchestra in a program on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day comprising Agnegram by Abrams’s mentor Michael Tilson Thomas; Timo Andres’s piano concerto Made of Tunes, written for and featuring Aaron Diehl as soloist; “Three Dance Episodes” from On the Town by Leonard Bernstein (Tilson Thomas’s mentor); and Copland’s Billy the Kid Suite. [Minneapolis]

JANUARY 2026

Jan 4, 5, 6
Cellist INBAL SEGEV, an established driving force in the creation of new cello repertoire for the 21st century, joins the National Youth Orchestra (NYO) of Great Britain under the baton of Alexandre Bloch for performances of Anna Clyne’s cello concerto, DANCE. Segev commissioned the work from Clyne after they were introduced by MacArthur Award-winning conductor Marin Alsop and has since performed it with orchestras around the world, often under Alsop’s baton. With the NYO she performs the work in multiple cities of the UK. [Jan 4: London; Jan 5: Warwick; Jan 6: Nottingham]

Jan 8–20
In his 15th season as Music Director of London’s Academy of St Martin in the Fields, JOSHUA BELL helms the orchestra on extensive tours on both sides of the Atlantic. Taking them to the Vienna Konzerthaus and eight other major European venues, their January program combines Schumann’s First Symphony (“Spring”), led by Bell from the violin, with two concertante works, in which he takes center stage: the Brahms Violin Concerto and Earth, Kevin Puts’s contribution to Bell’s acclaimed five-movement commissioning project, The Elements. [Jan 8: Hamburg, Germany; Jan 9: Hanover, Germany; Jan 11: Essen, Germany; Jan 12: Luxembourg City, Luxembourg; Jan 13: Stuttgart, Germany; Jan 14: Erlangen, Germany; Jan 15: Vienna; Jan 17: Frankfurt, Germany; Jan 18: Cologne, Germany; Jan 20: London]

Jan 9–16
DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (DSO) Music Director FABIO LUISI’s work in opera is extensive and celebrated, with nine years at the helm of the Zurich Opera and six years as Principal Guest Conductor of the Metropolitan Opera, during which he won a Grammy Award for his leadership of the last two operas of the Ring cycle. Texas Classical Review, reflecting on the DSO’s 2024–25 concert Ring cycle performances, called the cycle “a truly remarkable event and one that one can hope bodes well for similar operatic undertakings in the future.” Following up on that formidable achievement, Luisi will conduct Puccini’s Madama Butterfly as this season’s opera-in-concert production, with the cast including American soprano Jennifer Rowley in the title role, along with three Italians: tenor Fabio Sartori, mezzo-soprano Manuela Custer, and baritone Alessandro Luongo (Jan 9,11). A week later, Luisi and the orchestra follow up on their critically acclaimed performances of Anton Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony in 2022–23 and his Seventh in 2024–25 with his Symphony No. 9, continuing their long-term exploration of his symphonic output (Jan 15, 16). [Jan 9, 11, 15, 16: Dallas]

Jan 12
ORCHESTRA OF ST. LUKE’S (OSL) presents a concert version of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium as part of United in Sound: America at 250. Conducted by Rob Berman and directed by Shuler Hensley, the performance features the original orchestrations by Robert Russell Bennett, performed by a 45-piece orchestra and an all-star Broadway cast. Set in a Western territory at the turn of the 20th century, Oklahoma! – based on the play Green Grow the Lilacs by Lynn Riggs – is a groundbreaking musical celebrating love, resilience, and the American spirit. [NYC/CH]

Jan 15–27
Grammy winner JULIA BULLOCK, known for “communicat[ing] intense, authentic feeling, as if she were singing right from her soul” (Opera News), joins cellist Seth Parker Woods, recipient of the 2022 Chamber Music America Michael Jaffee Visionary Award, and pianist Conor Hanick, a frequent collaborator and fellow member of the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC*), for a U.S. recital tour featuring a new commission by Tania León and music of George Walker, John Tavener, Ravel, Previn, and Nina Simone. [Jan 15: Los Angeles; Jan 18: Chicago; Jan 23: NYC/92Y; Jan 25: Rochester, NY; Jan 27: Blacksburg, VA]

Jan 21–30
Early next year, LEIF OVE ANDSNES returns to the States for a five-city solo recital tour. After kicking off in Athens, GA, this takes him to Seattle, Stanford, New York’s Carnegie Hall, and the Boston Celebrity Series, with a program of the complete first book of Janáček’s On an Overgrown Path, selections from György Kurtág’s Játékok, and two compositions by Robert Schumann: 4 Klavierstücke and the beloved miniatures of his Carnaval. As The New York Times wrote in its preview of the Carnegie Hall season: “You go to a recital by the pianist Leif Ove Andsnes to be as surprised as you are awed. His dignified virtuosity is a given.” [Jan 21: Athens, GA; Jan 23: Seattle; Jan 25: Stanford, CA; Jan 27: NYC/CH; Jan 30: Boston]

Jan 22, 23, 25
Cellist ALISA WEILERSTEIN joins ALAN GILBERT and Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra for performances of Britten’s sole Cello Concerto in both Hamburg (Jan 22, 25) and nearby Lübeck (Jan 23). Gilbert and the orchestra also perform Brahms’s Second Symphony on the program. Released this past April, their interpretation of the same composer’s Third Symphony was recently chosen as one of five “unmissable new classical recordings” by Gramophone magazine (see also Nov 25). [Jan 22, 25: Hamburg, Germany; Jan 23: Lübeck, Germany]

Jan 29–Feb 1
MANFRED HONECK leads the New York Philharmonic in performances of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, featuring María Dueñas, and his own arrangement of music from Richard Strauss’s opera Elektra. “Honeck unified the players of the New York Philharmonic using something we don’t often hear from the stage of David Geffen Hall: a distinct point of view,” wrote The New York Times after one of their recent collaborations, deemed a New York Times “Critic’s Pick.” [Jan 29, 30, 31; Feb 1: NYC/DGH]

Jan 29–Feb 1
DANIIL TRIFONOV performs Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It was as the orchestra’s 2024-25 artist-in-residence that Trifonov recently “reinforced his standing as one of the finest pianists of our time” (Chicago Sun-Times). [Jan 29, 30, 31; Feb 1: Chicago]

FEBRUARY 2026

Feb 5–April 12
RAFAEL PAYARE, Music Director of both the SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (Montreal Symphony Orchestra/OSM), has four high-profile guest conducting appearances next spring. Joining The Philadelphia Orchestra in February, Payare leads Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with concertmaster David Kim as the soloist, on a program with Manuel de Falla’s El Amor Brujo – of which The Philadelphia Orchestra gave the U.S. premiere in 1922 – and pioneering Indigenous American composer Louis Wayne Ballard’s Devil’s Promenade (Feb 5–7). Later that month, Payare makes his Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra debut leading violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann in Frank Martin’s Violin Concerto, on a program with Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony and the Russian composer’s younger colleague Sofia Gubaidulina’s Fairytale Poem (Feb 18–19), before conducting the Shostakovich by itself in the orchestra’s “Essentials” series (Feb 20). In March, Payare conducts The Cleveland Orchestra in Miami with members of the New World Symphony. The program of Sibelius and Stravinsky comprises the former composer’s Swan of Tuonela and Violin Concerto in D minor with Armenian violinist Sergey Khachatryan as soloist, along with Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (March 27, 28). Finally, Payare joins the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Russian pianist Yulianna Avdeeva for performances of Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto, sharing the bill with a second interpretation of the Rite of Spring and Perú Negro by Jimmy López, Composer-in-Residence at Payare’s San Diego Symphony in the 2025–26 season (April 10, 12). [Feb 5–7: Philadelphia; Feb 18–20: Amsterdam; March 27, 28: Miami; April 10, 12: Pittsburgh]

Feb 12
Andrew Manze – Principal Conductor of the NDR Radiophilharmonie from 2014–23 – leads ORCHESTRA OF ST. LUKE’S (OSL) and celebrated English Beethoven interpreter Paul Lewis in Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, along with Haydn’s Symphony No. 47, “Palindrome,” and John Adams’s Fearful Symmetries, which OSL commissioned and premiered back in 1988 (see Nov 6). [NYC/CH]

Feb 12, 14
Grammy-winning conductor TEDDY ABRAMS debuts at the Atlanta Symphony for a jazz-inflected performance featuring Grammy winner Valerie Coleman’s 2024 Concerto for Orchestra, “Renaissance,” which nods to both Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and the Harlem Renaissance; Bernstein’s “Symphonic Dances” from West Side Story; and clarinetist Martin Fröst in both Artie Shaw’s Jazz Concerto and Copland’s Clarinet Concerto. [Atlanta]

Feb 14, 15
The LOS ANGELES CHAMBER ORCHESTRA and Music Director Jaime Martín give the world premiere performance of the Concerto for Orchestra by Pulitzer Prize laureate Michael Abels. The first new composition conceived through the orchestra’s Joan and Jeff Beal Fund for Living Composers, this shares the program with Fauré’s Pelléas et Mélisandeand Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, featuring ECHO Klassik award-winning pianist Fazıl Say. [Los Angeles]

Feb 19, 21
In concerts that mark his Atlanta Symphony Orchestra debut, SERGEI BABAYAN performs Rachmaninoff’s Fourth Piano Concerto under the baton of Liubov Nosova. The pianist is a recognized master of the Russian concerto repertoire, whose Rachmaninoff interpretations reveal a “magisterial technique almost as thrilling as his tender musicality” (The Boston Musical Intelligencer). [Atlanta]

Feb 20–March 15
MANFRED HONECK leads the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO) in two sets of recorded performances in spring of 2026, both featuring monumental works by great Austrian Romantics along with PSO commissions. First up are performances of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony, his largest symphonic creation, about which Hugo Wolf wrote that it was “the creation of a giant, surpassing in spiritual dimension and magnitude all the other symphonies of the master.” On the same program is a PSO commission from Canadian composer and conductor Samy Moussa, his Adgilis Deda – Hymn for Orchestra(Feb 20–22). The following month, Honeck leads the PSO in Mahler’s Second “Resurrection” Symphony, likewise accompanied by a PSO-commissioned work: Yizkor by Israel-based Russian composer Boris Pigovat, whose composition Therefore choose life was commissioned by Honeck and the PSO in 2017 to celebrate the conductor’s first decade with the orchestra (March 13–15). [Feb 20, 21, 22; March 13, 14, 15: Pittsburgh]

Feb 22–May 2
CHANTICLEER continues touring across North America with the new program “Our American Journey” (see Sep 20). [Feb 22: Ellicott City, MD; March 1: Toronto, ON; April 15: Portland, OR; April 20, 21: NYC/Kaufman; April 22: NYC/Trinity; April 28: Houston, TX; May 2: Lodi, CA]

Feb 24–March 16
JOSHUA BELL leads the Academy of St Martin in the Fields on a major U.S. tour, with stops at New York’s Carnegie Hall and other key venues across the country. Their multiple programs will feature works including Schumann’s First Symphony (“Spring”) and Dvořák’s Eighth, led by Bell from the violin, as well as Brahms’s sole Violin Concerto and Saint-Saëns’s Third, for which he takes center stage. [Feb 24: Palm Springs, CA; Feb 26: Northridge, CA; Feb 27: Costa Mesa, CA; Feb 28: Davis, CA; March 1: San Francisco; March 5: NYC/CH; March 6: North Bethesda, MD; March 10: Saginaw, MI; March 11: Iowa City, IA; March 14: Miami; March 15: Sarasota, FL; March 16: Vero Beach, FL]

Feb 26–28
ALISA WEILERSTEIN joins Alain Altinoglu and The Cleveland Orchestra for performances of the Cello Concerto by South Korea’s Unsuk Chin. The work is a favorite of the cellist’s, after one of whose previous accounts, Classical Music Daily concluded: “For making the piece emotionally accessible – and navigating its hurdles – Weilerstein more than earned her standing ovation.” [Cleveland, OH]

Feb 27, 28; March 1
The DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (DSO)’s new Artist-in-Residence, violinist and conductor Leonidas Kavakos, leads the orchestra from the podium in an all-Russian program: Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto with Alexander Kerr as soloist and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition as arranged by Ravel (see Oct 4). [Dallas]

Feb 27–March 7
In spring of 2026, RAFAEL PAYARE – in his seventh season as Music Director of the SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY – leads the orchestra in a two-week Brahms Festival, comprising four programs of iconic works. Payare’s way with Brahms was recently praised by San Francisco Classical Voice as “electrifying,” reminiscent of “the young Michael Tilson Thomas back in the day, when MTT was all motion and footwork.” The festival will feature Brahms’s A German Requiem with vocal soloists Julie Boulianne and Michael Sumuel and the San Diego Symphony Chorus (Feb 27; March 1); Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 (Feb 28); and Symphonies Nos. 4 and 3 in consecutive performances, each paired with the Violin Concerto featuring Leonidas Kavakos, whose 2017 recording of the Brahms Piano Trios with Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax was lauded by The Guardian as “faultless, larger-than-life music making” (March 6, 7). [Feb 27, 28; March 1, 6, 7: San Diego]

MARCH 2026

March 5–May 1
LEIF OVE ANDSNES performs Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto with orchestras on both sides of the Atlantic. After joining the Atlanta Symphony and Music Director Nathalie Stutzmann for three performances, of which the second will stream live to home audiences in the orchestra’s “Behind the Curtain” series, he reprises the concerto, first with the Chicago Symphony under Jakub Hrůša and then with the Danish National Symphony under Antonello Manacorda. The Beethoven Journey, Andsnes’s recording of the composer’s complete music for piano and orchestra, was recognized with BBC Music Magazine’s “2015 Recording of the Year Award” and chosen as one of The New York Times’s “Best of 2014.” [March 5, 7: Atlanta, GA; March 12, 13, 14: Chicago; April 30; May 1: Copenhagen, Denmark]

March 6–15
Violinist DANIEL HOPE returns to the States for three chamber concerts and his third Bay Area tour of the season with the New Century Chamber Orchestra (NCCO). His collaborations with cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han have been called “exceptionally sympathetic” (Classics Today), and the three reunite in Kansas City for piano trios by Haydn, Beethoven, and Dvořák (March 6). Two days later, they reprise the same program in Virginia at Wolf Trap (March 8), where Hope inaugurates his new appointment as Artistic Advisor for Chamber Music at The Barns, a role in which he succeeds Wu Han. These appearances bookend his return to Chamber Music Detroit for an evening of Mahler, Biedenbender, and Dvořák with the Garth Newel Piano Quartet (March 7). A week later, Hope leads the NCCO from the violin in a program combining the world premieres of new commissions from two San Francisco composers – Jake Heggie and Nat Stookey – with Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence and the Second Violin Concerto by Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges (March 13–15). [March 6: Kansas City, KS; March 7: Detroit; March 8: Vienna, VA; March 13: Berkeley, CA; March 14: San Francisco; March 15: Belvedere Tiburon, CA]

March 22
Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson plays a solo recital of Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert in CARAMOOR’s Rosen House Music Room (see Oct 5). [Katonah, NY]

March 26
Louis Langrée, returning for the second season in a row, conducts ORCHESTRA OF ST. LUKE’S in a program of American music by Ives, Ellington, Gershwin, and Bernstein joined by jazz pianist Gerald Clayton (see Nov 6). [NYC/CH]

March 26, 28, 29
To complete his season-long tenure as the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s 2025-26 Spotlight Artist, JOSHUA BELL joins the orchestra as soloist in Bruch’s First Violin Concerto, as well as conducting Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and an orchestral arrangement of Adoration by Florence Price. [Toronto, ON]

March 31; April 1, 2
The DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA embarks on a three-stop tour in California, performing Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 with soprano soloist Sofia Fomina and Schumann’s Piano Concerto with soloist Hélène Grimaud (see Oct 2). [March 31: Palm Desert, CA; April 1: Santa Barbara, CA; April 2: Costa Mesa, CA]

APRIL 2026

April 2, 3, 4
MANFRED HONECK guest conducts the LA Philharmonic in accounts of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, Haydn’s 93rd, and Reinecke’s Flute Concerto, featuring the orchestra’s principal flutist Denis Bouriakov. The conductor is “known for his intense warmth in general and his rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth in particular” (The New York Times). [Los Angeles]

April 12
The Junction Trio – violinist Stefan Jackiw, pianist Conrad Tao, and cellist Jay Campbell – performs music by Tao along with trios by Ravel and Schumann in CARAMOOR’s Rosen House Music Room (see Oct 5). [Katonah, NY]

April 15, 16
Pianist SERGEI BABAYAN makes his Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra debut performances of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, led by Austrian conductor Emmanuel Tjeknavorian. Rachmaninoff for Two, Babayan’s most recent Deutsche Grammophon release, was recognized with France’s prestigious 2024 Diapason d’Or. [Stockholm, Sweden]

April 17, 26
PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD performs the second book of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier in Boston’s Celebrity Series and at New York’s 92nd Street Y, where the recital marks his second appearance of the season. Aimard has studied the composer’s music in depth, and his recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, was hailed as “a new benchmark” (NDR Radio, Germany), while his release of The Art of Fugue topped both the Billboard and iTunes classical charts. [April 17: Boston; April 26: NYC/92Y]

April 25–May 3
THE ATLANTA OPERA presents Carl W. Knobloch, Jr. General & Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun’s new production of Puccini’s timeless opera Turandot – premiering on the 100th anniversary of the opera’s premiere and featuring “astounding” (The New Yorker) American soprano Angela Meade in the title role, which she inaugurated just last season at LA Opera, when ArtsBeat LA found that she “rose to the occasion magnificently … capturing the character’s inner turmoil with grace and power.” Opposite Meade as Calaf is Sardinian tenor Piero Pretti, a regular at La Scala since his debut in 2012, who has also sung Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly and Alfredo in La traviata at the Metropolitan Opera. Armenian soprano Juliana Grigoryan sings Liù, the role that served as the vehicle for her Met debut last season; and bass Peixin Chen, who sang Sarastro in The Atlanta Opera’s Magic Flute last season, sings the role of Timur. On the podium for Turandot will be young Mexican conductor Iván López Reynoso, who was recently announced as The Atlanta Opera’s new Principal Conductor. [April 25, 28; May 1, 3m: Atlanta]

April 30
Masaaki Suzuki – founder and music director of the Bach Collegium Japan – completes ORCHESTRA OF ST. LUKE’S (OSL)’s Carnegie Hall season conducting violinist Midori in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D, on a program with Mozart’s Don Giovanni Overture and Mendelssohn’s Fourth “Italian” Symphony (see Nov 6). [NYC/CH]

MAY 2026

May TBD
Grammy-winning soprano and curator JULIA BULLOCK – honored by Musical America as a 2021 Artist of the Year and “agent of change,” has been appointed the 2026 Festival Director of the Cincinnati Symphony May Festival. She will serve in the one-year position, curating a series of concerts and activities that both honor the May Festival’s storied history and reflect her own artistic vision, alongside the May Festival Director of Choruses, Matthew Swanson. [Cincinnati]

May 9
Pianist LARA DOWNES performs a concert themed to her Declaration Project – which celebrates the 250th anniversary of the U.S. by reflecting on the nation’s founding principles of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – in Berkeley for Cal Performances, with guests including folk legend Judy Collins, Grammy-winning singer and poet Tarriona “Tank” Ball, Invoke quartet, and the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir (see Sep 13). [Berkeley, CA]

May 9, 10
ALISA WEILERSTEIN reunites with her husband, RAFAEL PAYARE, for performances of Gabriela Ortiz’s cello concerto with the SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY. Titled Dzonot, the work was written expressly for Weilerstein, who premiered it with the Los Angeles Philharmonic last season, and is now available on a new recording on the Platoon label. As Musical America observes: “In Alisa Weilerstein, the concerto … has a brilliant advocate. She discharged Ortiz’s furious passagework with aplomb, brought gorgeous tone to the highly chromatic yet lyrical melodic lines and dazzled with double stops and other showmanship in two demanding cadenzas.” [San Diego, CA]

May 14–17
Marking his first appearances as Principal Guest Conductor of the New Jersey Symphony, JOSHUA BELL takes the orchestra on a Garden State tour. As well as conducting Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony and leading the same composer’s Hebrides Overture from the violin, he takes center stage for Lalo’s virtuosic Symphonie espagnole. [May 14, 16: Newark, NJ; May 15: Princeton, NJ; May 17: Morristown, NJ]

May 15, 17
Two seasons ago, Music Director FABIO LUISI and the DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA performed Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, and last season’s finale was the same composer’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection.” After opening 2025–26 with Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, they close the season with Symphony No. 8 (“Symphony of a Thousand”), one of the largest-scale choral works in the symphonic repertoire and offered by the composer as an optimistic expression of confidence in the eternal human spirit. Featured singers are soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen, soprano Meghan Kasanders, soprano Deanna Breiwick, mezzo-soprano Olesya Petrova, mezzo-soprano Renée Tatum, tenor Limmie Pulliam, baritone Luke Sutliff, and bass-baritone Brindley Sherratt, along with the Dallas Symphony Chorus led by chorus director Anthony Blake Clark. [Dallas]

May 30–June 7
Following THE ATLANTA OPERA (TAO)’s celebrated productions of Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, and Siegfried over the past three seasons, Wagner’s epic concludes with Twilight of the Gods (Götterdämmerung), which closes the cycle with a vision of the downfall of the old gods, the burning of Valhalla, and an implicit promise of the renewal of the world. With a superb cast starring “impassioned” (Parterre Box 2022) heldentenor Stefan Vinke, “a seasoned Wagnerian” (The Seattle Times), this all-new Tomer Zvulun production also features Lise Lindstrom, a “deeply sympathetic, vocally magnificent Brünnhilde” (Classical Voice North America); Atlanta Opera favorite Morris Robinson – returning to the company after his turn as Banquo in last season’s Macbeth – in the role of the villainous Hagen; and “wonderfully rich” (Los Angeles Times) mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford as Waltraute and the First Norn. Conducting the production will be the Mexican-born music director of Detroit Opera, Roberto Kalb. Reviewing TAO’s production of Siegfried, a critic for Opera magazine observed, “No one can have been disappointed by the intense and moving way we were conducted through Wagner’s drama at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre.” [May 30; June 2, 5, 7m: Atlanta]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Abbreviations for New York City concert venues are as follows:

CH = Carnegie Hall
DGH = David Geffen Hall
Kaufman = Kaufman Music Center
PAA = Park Avenue Armory
92Y = 92nd Street Y