MSO unveils ambitious 2027 season celebrating Australian talent and musical landmarks

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra will enter its 121^st year with a wide-ranging 2027 season featuring major symphonic works, 13 world premieres of Australian commissions and a program marking 200 years since the death of Beethoven.

Chief conductor Jaime Martín will open the season with three works by Beethoven, culminating in the Ninth Symphony and its celebrated Ode to Joy.

Across the year, Martín will also lead programs pairing composers, including Schubert and Mahler, Mozart and Brahms, Rachmaninov and Dvořák, Sibelius and Shostakovich, and Mozart with siblings Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn.

MSO chief executive Richard Wigley said the orchestra would approach the season with a renewed focus on the shared experience of live music.

“As we continue the journey from our 120^th year towards our 125^th, we do so with a clear sense of purpose – it’s all about great music,” Mr Wigley said.

Mr Martín described the program as “a celebration of the spirit of discovery”, combining familiar masterpieces with works audiences may be encountering for the first time.

Season highlights include A Midwinter Feast, bringing together music by Britten, Elgar and Walton, and a performance of William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast. Cellist Li-Wei Qin will perform Elgar’s Cello Concerto.

The orchestra will also present Symphonic Swing, led by conductor Clark Rundell and featuring the Australian premiere of Wynton Marsalis’ Trumpet Concerto, performed by Austrian trumpeter Selina Ott in her MSO debut. The program will include works by Gershwin and Bernstein, alongside a new commission by Australian composer Vanessa Perica.

Australian music will remain central to the season, with 13 world premieres of MSO commissions and co-commissions. Among them is a new work about Joan of Arc by former MSO composer-in-residence Mary Finsterer and librettist Tom Wright, drawing on transcripts from the 1431 heresy trial.

Yitzhak Yedid’s large-scale oratorio The Valley of the Dry Bones will bring together the MSO, MSO Chorus and The Consort of Melbourne, with Stan Grant narrating.

The orchestra has also appointed Melbourne-born, Europe-based conductor Nicholas Carter as chief guest conductor.

Mr Carter, general music director of the Staatsoper and Staatsorchester Stuttgart, will lead performances of Strauss and Schumann, as well as Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony. “The MSO gave me my first experience of orchestral music and first inspired me to become a conductor, so to return as chief guest conductor is an enormous privilege,” he said.

International guests will include pianists Paul Lewis and Alexandra Dariescu, conductors Chloé van Soeterstède, Rodolfo Barráez, Yutaka Sado and Eva Ollikainen, violinist Inmo Yang, soprano Claire Booth and mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron.

The orchestra will also continue its free and low-cost programs, including the Sidney Myer Free Concerts, MSO In Your Neighbourhood and performances in Frankston and Geelong.

Subscriptions open August 10, with individual tickets available from October 14. •