Dallas Symphony Sets 125th Season in 2025-26 Featuring MADAMA BUTTERFLY and More

As the Dallas Symphony Orchestra will celebrate its 125th anniversary in 2025–26, Grammy-winning conductor Fabio Luisi – now in his sixth season as Louise W. & Edmund J. Kahn Music Director – helms eleven programs in the Texas Instruments Classical Series, plus the DSO Gala with new Artist-in-Residence Leonidas Kavakos as his special guest. Luisi bookends the season with performances of two Mahler Symphonies, Nos. 4 and 8 (Oct 2, 5; May 15, 17); as well as conducting opera-in-concert performances of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (Jan 9, 11); Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 (Jan 15, 16); three of the six world premieres the orchestra will present this season, composed by Angélica Negrón (Oct 16–18), Jonathan Cziner (Nov 20–22) and Moni (Jasmine) Guo (also Nov 20–22); and much more. The Next Stage Digital Concert Series will continue into the 2025–26 season with select programs from the Texas Instruments Classical Series being made available on the DSO’s YouTube channel. In addition, the DSO will continue its partnerships with medici.tv, Symphony.live and KERA/PBS to present important programs that will reach audiences around the world.
 
Michelle Miller Burns, Ross Perot President & CEO of the Dallas Symphony, comments:
“We are delighted to unveil an extraordinary concert season that celebrates the DSO’s 125th anniversary. This season, we continue our longstanding tradition of artistic excellence with a dynamic lineup of programming, including world premieres and cherished masterworks within the Texas Instruments Classical Series, and thrilling fan favorites in the Pops Series Presented by Capital One. We look forward to welcoming audiences to experience the joy of 125 years of music with us at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.”

DSO quasquicentennial

In celebration of the DSO’s 125th anniversary (“quasquicentennial”) milestone, the 2025–26 season was programmed with nods to significant moments, artists and music from throughout the orchestra’s history. The DSO traces its origins to a concert presented by a group of 40 musicians in 1900, conducted by Hans Kreissig, making it the oldest symphony orchestra in Texas and one of the oldest in the country.

2025 Dallas Symphony Orchestra Gala

The season kicks off with the 2025 Symphony Gala. Luisi will lead 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 2025 Gala 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 (Oct 4).
 
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 (Feb 27–March 1), and will collaborate with DSO musicians in chamber music performances throughout the season.

Premieres

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 anniversary season. Luisi and the orchestra are joined by the Dallas Symphony Chorus to premiere the as-yet-untitled new work, 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 (Mr. & Mrs. C. Thomas May, Jr. Chair); 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).
 
The DSO also presents three other world premieres this season: Kathryn Bostic, Emmy-nominated composer of film, TV and Broadway music, pays homage to Harlem Renaissance blues singer Gladys Bentley in a new DSO-commissioned work for soprano and orchestra, featuring 2025 Grammy-winning soprano Karen Slack and conductor Marin Alsop (Nov 7–9). Sphinx alumna Melissa White, praised for her “warmly expressive and lyrical” playing by Chicago Classical Review, makes her DSO debut with the world premiere of Composer-in-Residence Sophia Jani’s (Lisa & Robert Segert Chair) Violin Concerto, led by Norwegian conductor Tabita Berglund (Feb 12–15). The DSO presents its sixth and final world premiere when Principal Viola Meredith Kufchak (Hortense & Lawrence S. Pollock Chair) is the featured soloist in a new concerto from composer Jonathan Leshnoff, led by Colombian conductor Ana María Patiño-Osorio in her DSO debut (April 16–19).

More season highlights

Luisi and the DSO open the Texas Instruments Classical Series with 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, conducted by Hans Kreissig. Haydn’s symphony is paired with the first of two Mahler symphonies this season: his Symphony No. 4, featuring soprano soloist Sofia Fomina (Oct 2, 5).
 
A week later, Luisi follows up with performances featuring the music of his compatriot Ottorino Respighi: his Vetrate di Chiesa (“Church Windows”) and Le fontane di Roma (“The Fountains of Rome”). The program opens with the DSO premiere of Composer-in-Residence Sophia Jani’s What do flowers do at night? and also features pianist Bruce Liu in Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 5, “Egyptian” (Oct 9–12).
 
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).
 
After critically acclaimed performances of Anton Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony in 2022–23 and his Seventh in 2024–25, Luisi and the DSO continue their exploration of the composer’s symphonic output with the Symphony No. 9. This was Bruckner’s final symphonic work, but the composition was interrupted by his failing health and it was left unfinished at the time of his death in 1896 (Jan 15, 16).
 
Miklós Rózsa’s Violin Concerto was originally composed for legendary violinist Jascha Heifetz and premiered by the Dallas Symphony in 1956. This season, marking the DSO’s first performance of the work since that time, the concerto will be performed by 16-year-old violinist Amaryn Olmeda, making his DSO debut, on a program with folk-dance inspired music by both Brahms and Bartók. For this concert, Luisi will begin the program with a “surprise” piece not listed in the program books or advertised in advance. Audience members will be encouraged to share their thoughts and impressions of the piece, which will be revealed at the top of the second half of the program after intermission (March 26–28).
 
Next up for Luisi is an all-Russian program, featuring Glinka’s Overture to Ruslan and Ludmila, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2, "Little Russian," and the 1945 version of Stravinsky’s The Firebird Suite (April 30–May 3).
 
Luisi’s penultimate concerts of the season pair Mozart’s “Haffner” Symphony with three showcases for three different soloists: Bach’s Violin Concerto in E featuring DSO Co-Concertmaster Nathan Olson (Fanchon & Howard Hallam Chair); Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto in E-flat featuring DSO Principal Trumpet Stuart Stephenson (Diane & Hal Brierley Chair), and the Beethoven concert aria “Ah! Perfido,” sung by soprano Kathryn Henry (May 7–10).
 
Two season ago, Luisi and the DSO performed Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, and last season’s finale was Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection.” After opening 2025–26 with Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, which they also play on tour in California, 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 (May 15, 17).

West Coast tour

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