The Toronto Symphony Orchestra has introduced particulars of the group’s 2025/26 live performance season. Taking inspiration from Toronto’s upcoming function within the World Cup, Music Director Gustavo Gimeno’s programming emphasizes cross-border connections.
It’s a diverse season and line-up that provides each crowd pleasers and new voices, a pleasant area for younger audiences, and extra.
Highlights embrace a gala the place Lang Lang will carry out Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto, and the Canadian Première of a brand new, TSO co-commissioned Concerto for Orchestra written and carried out by Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi.
“Gustavo Gimeno has programmed a very distinctive 2025/26 season, highlighting the facility of music to transcend borders and rework listeners,” says Mark Williams, Beck Household CEO of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. “There’s something for everybody on the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and collectively we are going to get pleasure from the wide range of classical, Pops, movie, and household concert events that carry us collectively as a group of music lovers all season lengthy and group is what it’s all about. Your presence, your vitality, and your love for this orchestra — your orchestra — are what make every thing we do doable. Whether or not you’re a donor or a long-time subscriber, or are attending for the primary time, I encourage you to discover what our 2025/26 season has to supply. There’s something extraordinary ready for you, and we might love so that you can be a part of us.”
Masterworks Collection (Curated by Gustavo Gimeno)
“In the identical spirit of excellence and keenness that drives the worldwide athletes vying for the World Cup, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra is poised to current music that resonates on a grand and international scale all through our extraordinary 2025/26 season,” says Gustavo Gimeno.
“Forming an emotional and celebratory arc, the 12 months begins with the exhilarating drama of Carmina Burana and concludes with Beethoven’s superb ‘Ode to Pleasure’, and alongside the best way we discover enduring works and compelling premières by residing composers. But, what excites me most is the range of the applications we have now crafted — there’s something for each listener to find and revel in. The magic of dwell music is within the shared second, the best way it connects us to one thing higher, and I’m significantly trying ahead to exploring that reference to our great audiences.”
The blockbuster opener spotlights Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. Gimeno and the orchestra shall be joined by the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, the Toronto Kids’s Refrain, and three soloists: soprano Julie Roset (an Operalia winner in her TSO début), tenor Andrew Haji, and baritone Sean Michael Plumb (additionally in his TSO début). Additionally on this system is the Canadian Première of a jazz-infused Concerto for Orchestra by the legendary Wynton Marsalis, co-commissioned by the TSO.
Different main works offered on this collection:
- Mahler’s Symphony No. 9;
- Ravel’s Boléro;
- Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5;
- Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3;
- Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7;
- Music from Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman and Götterdämmerung;
- Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 3 and a collection from his ballet Romeo and Juliet (each recorded dwell for launch on the Harmonia Mundi label);
- Sibelius’s Symphony No. 5; Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto (with Concertmaster Jonathan Crow as soloist);
- Vivaldi’s The 4 Seasons; and 6 Beethoven symphonies, the long-lasting Ninth to finish the common season.
Jonathan Crow curates the TSO Chamber Soloists performances, which provide early viewers members 5 pre-concert performances at choose concert events within the Masterworks collection.
TSO’s 2025/26 Highlight Artists
The TSO’s 2025/26 Highlight Artists are Bruce Liu and Joshua Bell. Gustavo Gimeno selects the Highlight Artists annually based mostly on each technical virtuosity and flexibility. Every will carry out two applications.
Canadian pianist Bruce Liu performs Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in his extremely anticipated return to the TSO stage after his acclaimed 2022 debut.
American violinist and conductor Joshua Bell will each carry out and lead. He’ll carry out the Canadian Première of a lately rediscovered Violin Concerto by mid-Twentieth-century Ukrainian composer Thomas de Hartmann. He’ll lead and play Florence Value’s Adoration and Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1, and in the identical program, he’ll conduct Beethoven’s overture to Egmont and Symphony No. 7.
Soloists & Visitor Artists
The season closes with Beethoven’s Ninth, that includes as soloists soprano Ambur Braid, mezzo-soprano Ema Nikolovska, tenor Saimir Pirgu, and bass Jongmin Park. All shall be making their debuts with the TSO.
Visitor Conductors
TSO audiences will be capable to expertise the work of numerous distinguished artists making their debuts with the group in 2025/26:
- Eva Ollikainen will conduct the suite from Stravinsky’s The Firebird;
- Stephanie Childress will conduct R. Schumann’s “Spring” Symphony;
- Pianist Mao Fujita will carry out Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2;
- Cellist Abel Selaocoe will carry out Jessie Montgomery’s Cello Concerto, a North American Première/TSO Co-commission;
- Cellist Pablo Ferrández will carry out Dvořák’s Cello Concerto;
- Sitarist Anoushka Shankar will play Sitar Concerto No. 2 “Raga-Mala” by her father, Ravi Shankar;
- Accordionist Ksenija Sidorova will play Tõnu Kõrvits’s Dances: Concerto for Accordion and Orchestra, a North American Première/TSO Co-commission.
Returning Visitor Artists
The record of returning visitor artists is diverse, and consists of violinist María Dueñas (Korngold’s Violin Concerto), and pianists Francesco Piemontesi (Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27), and Denis Kozhukhin (Grieg’s Piano Concerto). Pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet performs Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No. 5 “Egyptian” with the Nationwide Arts Centre Orchestra and conductor Alexander Shelley.
Two conductors make long-awaited returns to the TSO podium throughout 2025/26.
- Paavo Järvi makes a return to conduct the concerto by fellow Estonian Kõrvits;
- Franz Welser-Möst makes his first look with the TSO in over 35 years to conduct a collection he compiled from R. Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier.
Toronto audiences can even welcome the return of conductors Elim Chan (Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9), Dalia Stasevska (Sibelius’s Finlandia, with the TSO and TSYO performing aspect by aspect), former RBC Resident Conductor Earl Lee (Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5), and Conductor Emeritus Peter Oundjian (Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations).
Premieres
Oundjian’s live performance additionally consists of the Canadian Première of Joan Tower’s suite from her Concerto for Orchestra.
The 2025/26 season’s programming features a whole of 16 premières:
- Francisco Coll (Lilith Symphony, North American Première/TSO Fee);
- Carlos Simon (Destiny Now Conquers, Canadian Première);
- Philip Glass (“Conferences Alongside the Edge” from Passages, Canadian Première);
- A brand new work by Indigenous composer Cris Derksen that was commissioned in partnership with the Centre for Dependancy and Psychological Well being (CAMH) as a part of the TSO’s Artwork of Therapeutic program (World Première).
Authentic items by RBC Affiliate Composer Liam Ritz, former NextGen Composer Bekah Simms, and three new NextGen Composers — Sophie Dupuis, Jesse Plessis, and Darren Xu — can even obtain World Premières.
That’s not all…
That covers the Masterworks applications solely. The TSO additionally provides the Pops Collection, Particular Performances, Younger Individuals’s Concert events, Relaxed Concert events, the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra, and much more than that.
- Discover season subscriptions, and particulars concerning the season’s programming, [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is a Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. She is an skilled freelance author, blogger and writing teacher.
