The Albany Symphony Reveals 2025-2026 Season Lineup

Albany Symphony has announced its 2025-2026 season, which features masterworks including Stravinsky's The Firebird Suite, Holst's The Planets, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, Beethoven's Violin Concerto, and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10, as well as thrilling new works by today's most outstanding, celebrated composers. Concerts will take place in the Capital Region's most sonically splendid concert venues, including the legendary Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, the Palace Theatre in downtown Albany, Proctors in Schenectady, and EMPAC at RPI in Troy. The season continues the Albany Symphony's multi-year festival project Water Music New York: More Voices, which commemorates the Erie Canal Bicentennial.

"We are so excited to share our fabulous 2025-2026 season with you," said David Alan Miller, Heinrich Medicus Music Director. "There are such amazing, timeless masterpieces on every program, along with dazzling works by some of the most compelling composers of our time. We have such gorgeous pieces to share with you, including The Planets, Beethoven's Violin Concerto with Midori, and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 with Garrick Ohlsson. New works will include Bobby Ge's amazing new Violin Concerto featuring an 18-year-old virtuoso, Keila Wakao, as well as new works by Albany Symphony favorites Viet Cuong and Clarice Assad. We'll introduce you to extraordinary musical creators working today, including superstar 13-year-old composing phenom, Isaac Thomas. Most important, our brilliant Albany Symphony musicians have never sounded better and are playing at the highest international level. The beauty of their playing will take your breath away!!!"

"Your Albany Symphony has compiled one of our most adventurous seasons yet, befitting the Capital Region's innovative spirit," said Emily Fritz-Endres, Executive Director. "David Alan Miller has outdone himself, enticing some of the most interesting and important (not to mention busy!) artists working today to take the stage alongside our ultra-talented Albany Symphony musicians. Each concert includes the most brilliant orchestral pieces of all time alongside musical stories from living composers that will reshape America's musical future. As our audience grows to more than 15,000 people, we strive to invite more and more people of all ages to our concerts. No matter why you enter the region's impressive concert halls to hear your orchestra, we know you'll be glad you did. Most importantly, our music will be even more superb with you there."

Opening night in October features Igor Stravinsky's glorious The Firebird Suite and Dvořák's heartbreakingly beautiful Cello Concerto, performed by cellist Zlatomir Fung. Fung burst onto the scene as the first American in four decades (and youngest musician ever) to win First Prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition Cello Division and has since garnered accolades and standing ovations at performances worldwide

Gustav Holst's The Planets, perhaps the single most famous piece of English concert music, will be the centerpiece of the November concert. It features a haunting offstage chorus of 40 women from Albany Pro Musica. Holst explores each planet astrologically, expanding how listeners not only see but hear the Solar System. The November concert will also feature the world premiere of Bobby Ge's Violin Concerto. Keila Wakao, an absolutely brilliant 18-year-old violinist based in Boston, will perform the piece. She has performed with the Boston Symphony and major orchestras around the globe and is currently studying at New England Conservatory. She is the daughter of Boston Symphony oboist, Keisuke Wakao.

Christina Bouey, Albany Symphony's multi-talented new concertmaster, Goldberg Charitable Trust chair, will be one of the soloists in December, performing J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 5. Also on the program, Yi-heng Yang returns to perform Mozart's most romantic concerto, the Piano Concerto No. 20, on her own gorgeous fortepiano, an exact replica of the instrument Mozart premiered the work on. Haydn's most famous work, the "Surprise" Symphony, will be sure to light up the newly renovated Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.

In January, audiences are invited to escape the cold to hear the unparalleled splendor of legendary violinist Midori in Beethoven's Violin Concerto. Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10, a monumental masterpiece composed as a protest to Stalin's fascist regime is also on the program, along with a charming fanfare by Jennifer Higdon, TenFold. Famed American conductor André Raphel, renowned for his versatility and dynamic podium presence, will serve as guest conductor.

February's Valentine's Weekend concerts will feature gorgeous love songs by Mahler, and a new set by Loren Loiacono, as well as Romantic classics by Tchaikovsky and Schumann. Perhaps best known as the National Anthem singer for the NY Rangers at Madison Square Garden, baritone John Brancy is a Grammy-Award winner who will perform Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer.

March features another young talented soloist, 15-year-old Anwen Deng, who will perform Beethoven's heavenly Piano Concerto No. 4. The March concert will include Bruckner's timeless masterpiece, Symphony No. 7, which will fill Troy Savings Bank Music Hall with sonic splendor. Also on the program, a new Bruckner-inspired work by Francisco del Pino.

The April concert will include one of the greatest of all romantic concertos, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 performed by the legendary pianist, Garrick Ohlsson. Ohlsson is one of the world's leading interpreters of this spectacular work. Edward Elgar's endlessly charming Enigma Variations will also be on the program. Each of the 14 short movements is a musical depiction of an influential person in Elgar's life. Joel Thompson, a rising composer who has worked with the Albany Symphony twice before will have his wonderful new tone poem written for the New York Philharmonic, To See the Sky, performed.

The season will conclude with the orchestra's annual survey of the most exciting, noteworthy recent American music, the American Music Festival in June, a signature series of concerts and special events celebrating the most interesting composers of today. Featured composers include audience favorites, Viet Cuong, Christopher Theofanidis, and Clarice Assad. And we are thrilled that the four extraordinary percussionists, Sandbox Percussion, will return! Three new America250 commissions, honoring the semiquincentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, by Brittney Benton, Jihyun Kim, and Max Vinetz will complete the program.

Water Music New York: More Voices will continue in 2025-2026. This multi-art, creative placemaking initiative in partnership with the New York State Canal Corporation commemorates the bicentennial of the completion of the Erie Canal. Through collaboration with composers, local arts partners, educational institutions and community members, the project is designed to spark dialogue and expand perspectives to celebrate the Erie Canal's past, present, and future. Learn more at albanysymphony.com/watermusicny.

To post a comment, you must register and login.