This is the time of year when our major classical music organizations tantalize us with important details of forthcoming seasons. Read More
The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver Opera and the Vancouver Recital Society have now all announced plans for the upcoming year. Here are the highlights
The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver Opera and the Vancouver Recital Society have now all announced plans for the upcoming year. Here are the highlights
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This is the time of year when our major classical music organizations tantalize us with important details of forthcoming seasons.
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The dockets for Vancouver Opera and the Vancouver Recital Society have been out for a few weeks. The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra has just released its 2025-26 plans — and what plans they are.
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Of course, the VSO season contains many series, specials and add-ons, but the core of its programming — and its raison d’être — are the two Masterpiece Series, plus Musically Speaking, one-off concerts with chat. And, for committed orchestral fans, it’s looking pretty good.
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Beyond the seemingly requisite big 19th century solo vehicles, next season offers a particularly rich selection of more exciting works, paired with impressive soloists.
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Sun Spots
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Violinists Stefan Jackiw and Maria Milstein will perform, respectively, Prokofiev’s second Violin Concerto in November and Berg’s poignant concerto To the Memory of an Angel in March. Also next March comes a rare opportunity to hear Tout un monde lointain … (A Whole Distant World …, 1970) by the late French composer Henri Dutilleux. It will be performed by elegant and eloquent cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras.
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In February, VSO principal cellist Henry Shapard will be featured in Prokofiev’s Symphony-Concerto, written just before the composer’s death expressly for Mstislav Rostropovich, the great cellist who had quite the relationship with the VSO.
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In honour of the 150th anniversary of Ravel’s birth, we get both his piano concertos on a single concert with soloist Yeol Eum Son in November. In the same jazz-inflected idiom as Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand, there’s Gershwin’s Concerto in F essayed by Helen Grimaud next May. Vadym Kholodenko offers Bartók’s heartbreaking Third Concerto the same month.
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But the coup of the season is the local premiere of John Adams’ Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes, with pianist Orli Shaham in the solo role. I can’t resist pointing out that the first of three movements is marked “Gritty, funky, but in Strict Tempo; Twitchy, Bot-like.”
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It’s encouraging that the VSO’s approach to new music seems to have moved beyond token starter works to more substantial compositions by international composers: British superstar George Benjamin’s 2021 Concerto for Orchestra is on tap in the fall, as is American Missy Mazzoli’s 2016 Sinfonia for Orbiting Spheres. Peruvian composer Jimmy López’s Aino graces a springtime concert, as does Lumière et pesanteur by the late Kaiji Saariaho.
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I’m delighted by some outstanding choices for full-length symphonies to anchor programs. We will get a rare chance to hear Louise Ferrenc’s 1847 Symphony No. 3 (think middle-period Beethoven with a dash of Mendelssohnian verve) on the September launch program of the Masterworks Diamond series. The infrequently programmed Fifth Symphony of Bruckner dominates the Masterworks Gold program in October. Another Fifth Symphony, by Prokofiev, is featured on a spring Musically Speaking program, while Carl Nielsen’s hymn to the enduring human spirit, his “Inextinguishable” Symphony, should brighten up the dark nights of January.