Handel and Haydn Society Reveals 2025-26 Season Featuring Five Soloist Debuts and More

The Handel and Haydn Society has revealed details of its 2025-26 Season, the 211th consecutive season. H+H Artistic Director Jonathan Cohen has crafted a schedule of eight programs featuring an array of repertoire from the early Baroque to the late Classical period to be passionately performed by the H+H Orchestra and Chorus using period instruments and historically informed performance techniques. The 2025-26 Season includes large-scale works by Handel, Beethoven, and Haydn; Handel's Messiah starring four American soloists; Baroque gems by French composers not frequently programmed by H+H; and a choral program to shine a spotlight on the H+H Chorus. The H+H Youth Choruses will be featured at performances throughout the upcoming season.

H+H Artistic Director Jonathan Cohen will conduct five concerts, including the season opening performance of Handel's oratorio Saul at Symphony Hall and a program of Bach and Telemann cantatas to be performed as H+H's Carnegie Hall debut before being presented in Boston and Cambridge. Resident Conductor Scott Allen Jarrett will lead H+H's annual Baroque Christmas performances, and to complete the schedule H+H welcomes back two guest conductors during the 2025-26 Season: Raphaël Pichon and James Burton.

H+H's 211th Season opens with Handel's powerful, large-scale oratorio Saul at Symphony Hall on October 3 + 5. Jonathan Cohen conducts a full stage of musicians to tell the story of Israel's first king with rousing choruses and blazing trumpets and drums. Joining the H+H Orchestra and Chorus and five guest soloists for these performances will be members of choral ensembles from across Massachusetts selected for the second annual H+H CitySing. Rhode Island based countertenor Christopher Lowrey sings the role of David, joined by bass-baritone Neal Davies (Saul) and three soloists making their H+H debut: soprano Sarah Brady (Merab), soprano Julie Roset (Michal), and tenor Linard Vrielink (Jonathan).

The H+H Orchestra returns to Symphony Hall October 24 + 25 for two performances under the baton of Raphaël Pichon, who made his American conducting debut with H+H in 2021 and sold-out houses for Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 during H+H's 2023-24 Season. Pichon will lead the H+H Orchestra in Beethoven's rhythmic Symphony No. 7 paired with selections from Jean-Philippe Rameau's operas.

Four celebrated American soloists join H+H for the Society's 172nd consecutive performances of Handel's Messiah, a Boston holiday tradition. Conducted by Jonathan Cohen the November 28-30 concerts at Symphony Hall will feature soprano Lauren Snouffer, contralto Avery Amereau, tenor Ben Bliss, and bass-baritone Nicholas Newton in his H+H debut.

Festive Cantata 63 by J.S. Bach and a motet by his cousin J.L. Bach paired with Graupner's Magnificat in C Major will delight audiences at H+H's annual Baroque Christmas concerts December 18 + 21 at NEC's Jordan Hall. H+H Resident Conductor Scott Allen Jarrett directs with featured soloists from the H+H Chorus.

H+H welcomes back acclaimed English soprano and early music specialist Carolyn Sampson to perform works that bridge the Baroque and Classical periods. Directed by Cohen at NEC's Jordan Hall on January 9 + 11, the musical feast includes Mozart's well-known soprano feature Exsultate Jubilate, Haydn's profound Symphony No. 44, and one of Georg Philipp Telemann's last works, the dramatic and colorful cantata Ino, composed at the age of 84.

Cohen and the period H+H Orchestra return to Symphony Hall for an extravaganza of great Baroque orchestral works on April 10 + 12. Selections include Suite No. 1 from Handel's Water Music and Bach's lively Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 paired with works from less frequently programmed French composers: select movements from Jean-Baptiste Lully's comedic ballet Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and the dance-like orchestral acrobatics of Rameau's operas.

Following H+H's Carnegie Hall debut on May 14, Cohen directs the H+H Orchestra in the same program of Bach and Telemann cantatas paired with Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 at Old South Church in Boston's Copley Square on May 15 and Sanders Theater in Cambridge on May 16. Returning countertenor Christopher Lowrey will be joined by star soprano Robin Johannsen, tenor Guy Cutting, and bass-baritone Dingle Yardell.

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