Alan Gilbert in 2026–27: 10th Elbphilharmonie anniversary, 3rd “Visions” festival, Oedipus Rex, new recordings, & Japanese tour with NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra; Così fan tutte with Royal Swedish Opera; & guest dates in Cleveland, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, & beyond

Alan Gilbert (photo: Peter Hundert)

(August 2026) — Grammy-winning conductor Alan Gilbert maintains a major international presence in the 2026–27 season, which marks his eighth as Chief Conductor of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra (NDR EO) and the ensemble’s tenth in its state-of-the-art Hamburg home. Their upcoming highlights together include an Opening Night program featuring Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, the “Tragic”; concerts celebrating the Elbphilharmonie’s tenth anniversary; the world premiere of Artist-Across-Ensembles Missy Mazzoli’s new piano concerto with Artist-in-Residence Leif Ove Andsnes at the orchestra’s third “Elbphilharmonie Visions” festival; star-studded concert performances of Stravinsky’s opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex; a Japanese tour; and new titles in their OneGate Media digital recording series. As Music Director of the Royal Swedish Opera, where he recently extended his contract through 2029, Gilbert conducts Mozart’s Così fan tutte and concerts that include an all-American program to conclude the company’s yearlong celebrations of the Royal Swedish Orchestra’s landmark 500th anniversary. The conductor completes his 2026-27 lineup with returns to the Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bamberg Symphony, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Orchestre de Paris, and The Cleveland Orchestra, where he leads a December program of Debussy, Bartók, and Dalit Warshaw.

NDR EO: Elbphilharmonie anniversary, “Visions” festival, Oedipus Rex, Japanese tour, & more

Looking ahead at his coming season with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra (NDR EO), Gilbert comments:

“We at the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra might be the luckiest orchestra in the world having the Elbphilharmonie as our home. The hall has quickly become one of the most important stops for any touring orchestra, and we get to play here all the time! I love that the hall is so flexible as an arts space: it can absorb the largest orchestral sound mass and also works impeccably for a small chamber formation or even a solo instrument. The space is inspiring – the variety of what we have been able to imagine and realize is limitless.”

He leads an Opening Night program featuring principal timpanist Stephan Cürlis, now entering his farewell season with the orchestra. Cürlis is the soloist in James Oliverio’s timpani concerto, Legacy Ascendant, a work originally premiered by The Cleveland Orchestra under Gilbert’s leadership. As in previous years, he and the NDR EO complete their season-opening program with a Mahler symphony, this time the Sixth, or “Tragic” (Sep 4 & 5). Reviewing their recording of the same composer’s Seventh, MusicWeb International called the conductor and orchestra “selfless ambassadors for Mahler,” observing: “Thanks to the expert pacing of Alan Gilbert, … we are in good hands.”

To celebrate the orchestra’s tenth anniversary in the visually and acoustically spectacular Elbphilharmonie, affectionately known as “Elphi,” Gilbert conducts a fitting program of Wagner’s Parsifal Prelude, the work that launched the venue’s official grand opening; Unsuk Chin’s Frontispiece, which he premiered in his first concert as Chief Conductor of the NDR EO; and Die Weihe des Hauses, a Beethoven overture composed for the inauguration of Vienna’s Theater in der Josefstadt. The program concludes with Harmonielehre by American icon John Adams, whose 80th birthday falls just weeks later (Jan 10 & 11).

The NDR EO’s 2026–27 Artist-in-Residence is Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, whose upcoming collaborations with Gilbert and the orchestra include the world premiere of a new piano concerto co-commissioned by NDR EO from Grammy-nominated American composer Missy Mazzoli – their first Artist-Across-Ensembles – at the third “Elbphilharmonie Visions” (Feb 6). As an ardent champion of new music, Gilbert founded this biennial festival to showcase cutting-edge new composition in compact, one-hour concerts. His other 2027 “Visions” highlights include world premieres of new works by American jazz composer-bandleader Darcy James Argue (Feb 6) and young Serbian composer Veljko Nenadić, winner of the Claussen-Simon Composition Prize (Jan 29).

As well as joining Andsnes for Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto in Hamburg, Budapest, and Vienna (Oct 15–22), Gilbert and the NDR EO undertake concerto collaborations with violinists Janine Jansen (Sep 10–12), Frank Peter Zimmermann (Oct 8 & 11), Julia Fischer (April 8 & 11), and Lisa Batiashvili (June 25 & 26); percussionist Vivi Vassileva (Jan 29); and pianists Tamara Stefanovich (Sep 7) and Hayato Sumino (Feb 11 & 12). Their upcoming highlights also include concert performances of Stravinsky’s opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex, featuring Jamie Barton, Michael Schade, Matthias Goerne, and Morris Robinson with the MDR Radio Choir, in Paris (May 24), Prague (May 30), and at the annual Hamburg International Music Festival (May 28 & 29). Last season, their sold-out concert performances of Richard Strauss’s Elektra impressed Die Welt as a “highly topical and significant event.” The German national daily explained:

“Gilbert’s version, conducted with commitment and power at the Elbphilharmonie, is entirely justified. … The conductor explores every nuance of the composition and unfolds its full drama without staging, allowing the audience to focus more intently.”

Early next year, Gilbert helms the NDR EO on tour in Japan. Chopin Competition laureate Hayato Sumino is their soloist in Gershwin’s F-major Piano Concerto and Rhapsody in Blue, on programs that also include Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony and Brahms’s Fourth Symphony (Feb 21–23). Brahms was a Hamburg native, whose music has long loomed large in the orchestra’s repertoire; Gilbert’s NDR EO reading of the composer’s Third Symphony was recently chosen as one of Gramophone’s five “unmissable new classical recordings.”

That album is one of ten that Gilbert and the orchestra have issued in their ongoing digital series, available from OneGate Media on all major streaming platforms. Captured live in September 2021, their recording of Robert Schumann’s Fourth Symphony is the most recent addition to this growing discography, and works by Bruckner, Ravel, Debussy, and Dvořák are due for release over the coming season.

RSO: Così fan tutte & more

The winner of a Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording, Gilbert has been Music Director of the Royal Swedish Opera (RSO) since spring 2021. Named Royal Court Kapellmeister by the King of Sweden the following year, he recently renewed his contract until the end of 2029, with the possibility of further extension. At the Stockholm house this fall, he conducts Mozart’s Così fan tutte, starring Julia Sporsén as Fiordiligi, Johanna Rudström as Dorabella, Kyle Miller as Guglielmo, and both David Portillo (Nov 9–20) and Mingjie Lei (Nov 23–28) as Ferrando in Clara Svärd’s production, which transports the action to a 1960s-style artist’s studio (Nov 9–28).

Gilbert also undertakes three collaborations with the Royal Swedish Orchestra, now celebrating its landmark 500th anniversary. After a program of Britten and Stravinsky (Sep 25 & 26), they conclude the orchestra’s year-long festivities with an all-American lineup of Copland, Barber, Gershwin, and Bernstein (Nov 21 & 25). Finally, at the company’s Beethoven Festival next spring, they pair Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony with the Faust Overture by German Romantic composer Emilie Mayer, known in her lifetime as the “Female Beethoven” (June 2).

The conductor’s recent RSO highlights include Parsifal, Wozzeck, and the company premiere of Rusalka. Of the Wagner production, Opera magazine wrote: “Outstanding. This was Gilbert’s first Parsifal, but he guided the orchestra, soloists and chorus through the work as if he’s been doing it for years, superbly, balanced throughout.” Of the Berg, Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet noted: “The Royal Swedish Orchestra plays masterfully under Alan Gilbert’s direction.” Of the Dvořák, national Swedish TV station SVT reported: “The Royal Swedish Orchestra is in top form with its inspiring chief conductor Alan Gilbert,” and Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter observed: “The music is dramatic and demanding, but Gilbert leads it with clear vision.”

Guest engagements in Cleveland, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, & beyond

Gilbert makes regular guest appearances with many of the world’s foremost orchestras. This fall, he returns to The Cleveland Orchestra for a program juxtaposing Responses, a recent work by his fellow New York native Dalit Warshaw, with two 20th-century classics: Debussy’s Images and Bartók’s Second Violin Concerto, featuring Grammy-winner Augustin Hadelich (Dec 3–5). Since serving as Assistant Conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra in the mid-1990s, Gilbert has shared a special rapport with the ensemble that “evince[s] levels of comfort and mutual understanding enjoyed only by the initiated” (Cleveland Plain-Dealer).

In Europe, he leads Germany’s Bamberg Symphony in accounts of Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony and Mozart’s 25th Piano Concerto, featuring Inon Barnatan (Oct 2–4); joins the Orchestre de Paris for Mahler’s Sixth Symphony (“Tragic”) and Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy, with Joshua Bell as soloist (Dec 16 & 17); conducts the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra (Jan 21 & 22) and Royal Stockholm Philharmonic (April 1 & 2) in the Swedish capital; and, with Amsterdam’s venerable Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, helms a marine-themed program of Debussy, Anna Clyne, and Britten, of whose music his interpretations were “a highlight of the Britten year” (The New York Times) (April 21 & 22).

After joining Geneva’s Orchestre de la Suisse Romande for works by Robert Schumann, Ravel, Debussy, and Lili Boulanger, featuring pianist Beatrice Rana (May 12 & 13), Gilbert completes his guest lineup with a coupling of Schumann’s Second Symphony and Brett Dean’s concertante work The Lost Art of Letter Writing, with violin soloist Isabelle Faust, at the Berlin Philharmonic (June 17–19). As the Berliner Morgenpost reports, the conductor enjoys an especially close rapport with the storied German orchestra, whose “musicians have faith in him, letting him unleash his creativity to the fullest.”

Alan Gilbert: 2026-27 engagements

Sep 4 & 5
Hamburg, Germany
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra
Opening Night concert
James OLIVERIO: Timpani Concerto (with Stephan Cürlis, timpani)
MAHLER: Symphony No. 6, “Tragic”

Sep 7
Berlin, Germany
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra
HENZE: Tristan (with Tamara Stefanovich, piano)
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 1

Sep 10–12
   Sep 10 & 11: Hamburg, Germany
   Sep 12: Wismar, Germany
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra
John ADAMS: Lollapalooza
SZYMANOWSKI: Violin Concerto No. 1 (with Janine Jansen, violin)
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 1

Sep 25 & 26
Stockholm, Sweden
Royal Swedish Opera
BRITTEN: Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes
BRITTEN: Serenade for Tenor, Horn & Strings (with Michael Weinius, tenor; Stefan Dohr, horn)
STRAVINSKY: Le sacre du printemps

Oct 2–4
   Oct 2 & 3: Bamberg, Germany
   Oct 4: Erlangen, Germany
Bamberg Symphony
MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 25 (with Inon Barnatan, piano)
SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 10

Oct 8 & 11
Hamburg, Germany
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra
Missy MAZZOLI: Orpheus Undone
WALTON: Violin Concerto (with Frank Peter Zimmermann, violin)
MOZART: Symphony No. 41, “Jupiter”

Oct 15, 16, 18m, & 18
Hamburg, Germany
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra
BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 2 (with Leif Ove Andsnes, piano) (Oct 15, 16, & 18 only)
LISZT (orch. MÜLLER-BERGHAUS): Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (Oct 18m only)
DEBUSSY: La mer (Oct 15, 16, & 18m only)
RAVEL: Daphnis et Chloé (Oct 15, 16, & 18m only)

Oct 21 & 22
   Oct 21: Budapest, Hungary
   Oct 22: Vienna, Austria
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra
BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 2 (with Leif Ove Andsnes, piano)
LISZT (orch. MÜLLER-BERGHAUS): Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (Oct 21 only)
DEBUSSY: La mer (Oct 22 only)
RAVEL: Daphnis et Chloé

Nov 9, 12, 15, 17, 20, 23, 26, & 28
Stockholm, Sweden
Royal Swedish Opera
MOZART: Così fan tutte

Nov 21, & 25
Stockholm, Sweden
Royal Swedish Opera
Royal Swedish Orchestra
COPLAND: Appalachian Spring
BARBER: Knoxville: Summer of 1915
BERNSTEIN: Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
GERSHWIN: An American in Paris

Dec 3–5
Cleveland, OH
The Cleveland Orchestra
Dalit WARSHAW: Responses
Bartók: Violin Concerto No. 2 (with Augustin Hadelich, violin)
DEBUSSY: Images

Dec 16 & 17
Paris, France
Orchestre de Paris
BRUCH: Scottish Fantasy (with Joshua Bell, violin)
MAHLER: Symphony No. 6, “Tragic”

Jan 10 & 11
Hamburg, Germany
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra
10th Anniversary concert
Unsuk CHIN: Frontispiece for orchestra (Jan 10 only)
WAGNER: Prelude to Parsifal (Jan 10 only)
BEETHOVEN: Overture “Die Weihe des Hauses”
John ADAMS: Harmonielehre

Jan 21 & 22
Stockholm Sweden
Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra
Dalit WARSHAW: Responses
BARTÓK: Violin Concerto No. 1 (with Malin Broman, violin)
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: Scheherazade (with Malin Broman, violin)

Jan 29; Feb 6
Hamburg, Germany
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra
“Elbphilharmonie Visions” festival

   Jan 29
Veljko NENADIĆ: Six Caryatids – Epos for Orchestra (world premiere)
Daníel BJARNASON: Inferno, percussion concerto (with Vivi Vassileva, percussion)

   Feb 6
Missy MAZZOLI: Piano Concerto (world premiere; with Leif Ove Andsnes, piano)
Darcy James ARGUE: new work (with NDR Big Band)

Feb 11
Hamburg, Germany
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra
BEETHOVEN: Overture to Egmont
GERSHWIN: Rhapsody in Blue (with Hayato Sumino, piano)
DVOŘÁK: Symphony No. 9, “From the New World”

Feb 12
Hamburg, Germany
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra
BRAHMS: Academic Festival Overture
GERSHWIN: Rhapsody in Blue (with Hayato Sumino, piano)
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 4

Feb 21–23: tour of Japan with NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra
   Feb 21 & 22: Tokyo, Japan
   Feb 23: Yokohama, Japan
BRAHMS: Academic Festival Overture (except Feb 22)
BEETHOVEN: Overture to Egmont (Feb 22)
GERSHWIN: Piano Concerto in F (with Hayato Sumino, piano; except Feb 22)
GERSHWIN: Rhapsody in Blue (with Hayato Sumino, piano; Feb 22 only)
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 4 (except Feb 22)
DVOŘÁK: Symphony No. 9, “From the New World” (Feb 22 only)

April 1 & 2
Stockholm, Sweden
Royal Stockholm Philharmonic
BERWALD: Overture to Estrella de Sorin
Magnus LINDBERG: Violin Concerto No. 12 (with Lisa Batiashvili, violin)
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 2

April 8 & 11
Hamburg, Germany
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra
BARBER: Second Essay for Orchestra
BARBER: Violin Concerto (with Julia Fischer, violin)
BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral”

April 21 & 22
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Anna CLYNE: Restless Oceans
BRITTEN: Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes
BRITTEN: Passacaglia from Peter Grimes
DEBUSSY: La mer

May 12 & 13
Geneva, Switzerland
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
L. BOULANGER: D’un soir triste
R. SCHUMANN: Piano Concerto (with Beatrice Rana, piano)
DEBUSSY: Jeux
RAVEL: Daphnis et Chloé, Suite No. 2

May 24
Paris, France
Théâtre des Champs-Élysées
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra
STRAVINSKY: Oedipus Rex (with Jamie Barton, mezzo-soprano; Michael Schade, tenor; Matthias Goerne, baritone; Morris Robinson, bass; narrator TBA; MDR Radio Choir)
STRAVINSKY: Le sacre du printemps

May 28 & 29
Hamburg, Germany
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra
STRAVINSKY: Oedipus Rex (with Jamie Barton, mezzo-soprano; Michael Schade, tenor; Matthias Goerne, baritone; Morris Robinson, bass; narrator TBA; MDR Radio Choir)
STRAVINSKY: Le sacre du printemps

May 30
Prague, Czech Republic
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra
STRAVINSKY: Oedipus Rex (with Jamie Barton, mezzo-soprano; Michael Schade, tenor; Matthias Goerne, baritone; Morris Robinson, bass; narrator TBA; MDR Radio Choir)

June 2
Stockholm, Sweden
Royal Swedish Opera
Beethoven Festival
MAYER: Faust Overture
BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral”

June 17–19
Berlin, Germany
Berlin Philharmonic
Brett DEAN: The Lost Art of Letter Writing for violin and orchestra (with Isabelle Faust, violin)
R. SCHUMANN: Symphony No. 2

June 25–27: concerts with NDR Elbphilharmonie
   June 25 & 26: Hamburg, Germany (Elbphilharmonie; season-closing concerts)
June 27: Wiesbaden, Germany (Rheingau Musik Festival)
BEETHOVEN: Violin Concerto (with Lisa Batiashvili, violin)
John ADAMS: Absolute Jest for string quartet and orchestra
Richard STRAUSS: Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche