Broad, interconnected thematic programming drives the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s just-announced 2025-2026 season. The relationships of music to nature and to faith, as well as a season-long exploration of American music for the nation’s 250th birthday, animate an eight-and-a-half month schedule. It begins in September with pre-season concerts that include the annual free Concert for the City. Over the course of the season, Music Director Andris Nelsons leads 14 BSO subscription programs in addition to a concert by the Vienna Philharmonic, co-presented with Celebrity Series of Boston.
Woven through the season are works by Carlos Simon in his second season as Composer Chair of the BSO and performances by violinist Augustin Hadelich as the orchestra’s Artist in Residence. Hadelich is featured in two concertos (by John Adams and Thomas Adès) with the BSO, a concert with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, and two solo recitals, in addition to educational and community activities.
One major programming theme is “E Pluribus Unum: From Many, One,” with a kaleidoscopic array of American works across the season in celebration and exploration of the vibrant culture of this country. Among the highlights are Aaron Copland’s Third Symphony, a concert performance of Samuel Barber’s opera Vanessa, several works by John Adams, and an All-John Williams program that brings together his music for film and the concert stage.
In addition, the BSO celebrates the 125th anniversary of the opening of Symphony Hall, with programs of music written around 1900 and Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, the first music performed when the hall opened that year. Other programming initiatives are called “Where Words End: Music and the Natural World” and “Faith in Our Time.”
In addition to Andris Nelsons, conductors during the season include Dima Slobodeniouk, Susanna Mälkki, Domingo Hindoyan, Nodoka Okisawa, Thomas Adès, Jonathan Heyward, Andrey Boreyko, Herbert Blomstedt, and BSO conductors Thomas Wilkins, Samy Rachid, and Anna Handler.
Soloists include, among many others, pianists Emanuel Ax, Yuja Wang, Seong-Jin Cho, Yunchan Lim, Lucas and Arthur Jussen, and Marc-André Hamelin; violinists Joshua Bell, Gil Shaham, and Midori; cellists Yo-Yo Ma and Pablo Ferrández; and the BSO’s Concertmaster Nathan Cole, Principal Flute Lorna McGhee, Principal Viola Steven Ansell, percussionist J. William Hudgins, and newly-appointed Principal Double Bass Caleb Quillen.
To hear an extensive preview with BSO President and CEO Chad Smith, use the player above, and read the transcript below. For complete details about the 2025-2026 season, visit the BSO .
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT (lightly edited for clarity):
Brian McCreath I’m Brian McCreath at Symphony Hall with Chad Smith, President and CEO of the Boston Symphony. And we’re talking about the 2025-2026 Boston Symphony season, just announced. And as always, Chad, this is a packed season. There’s so much to talk about. We won’t get to talk every detail, though we could if we were going to stay all day. But I want to start with picking up on conversations that we’ve had before. We’ve talked about Tanglewood. We talked about your background when you arrived at the BSO. And one of the things that I’m always interested in, but I’ve talked with you a little about is your perceptions of audience, of what programs mean to audiences, how you present things to audiences in a way that’s meaningful to them. And this announcement takes, to my eye, a big step in a new direction for the presentation of programs. You’ve grouped programs into very, I mean, they’re broad, but they’re really understandable themes of the America 250th anniversary, of music and faith, of the 125th anniversary of the opening of Symphony Hall. Tell me your thinking about that and how you arrived at constructing the season in this way.
Chad Smith Thank you for noticing that. [McCreath chuckles] I will say first off, I’ve been here now for about 18 months, and one of the things that I’m continuously struck by is how extraordinarily sophisticated and deeply passionate about music our audiences are. This is a very special place, Boston, and our audiences have a real deep connection and a really thoughtful understanding of what they’re listening to. And so, our job as a major arts organization and an orchestra is to meet that expectation and exceed that expectation of inspiring our audiences, comforting our audiences, challenging our audiences. And I hope that the 2025-26 season does that. As a major arts organization and as one of the great orchestras in the world, we have a huge responsibility to 400 years of music. But we also have a responsibility to be an organization that pushes our art form forward. And so that balance—and sometimes, that tension—plays out across the season. I hope with the 25-26 season that our audiences will see the familiar but also recognize the contextualization of that familiar with new voices and inspiring ideas.
Brian McCreath One of the things that we’ve talked about before is the way—and I remember we talked earlier this season about that Beethoven series that you did, all nine symphonies in about three weeks, and your takeaway from that as something that was really valuable in understanding how audiences grasped programming. So, say a little bit more about what you have learned in these 18 months about Boston’s audience and what it responds to.
Chad Smith It’s no surprise, right? Boston is arguably the center of the knowledge industry in the world. Ideas are born here, right? This is a fertile ground for ideas. And for us at the Boston Symphony, we want to participate in that ethos. We want to be the orchestra of ideas. And that means engaging in these discussions that artists and audiences are having. So, in the season ahead, there are probably three big themes that we’re beginning to explore in many different ways, and I can talk a little bit about that.
“E Pluribus Unum: From Many, One”
Chad Smith The first is this idea of the America 250th and what it means. What is American music? What is the American experience? And the way that we’re exploring it is through this topic called “E Pluribus Unum: From Many, One.” And I love this. For me, that motto captures so much about what makes and what has made this incredible country vibrant. It’s that the American experience has understood one story, one person, one artist, one piece at a time. And that tapestry when it’s woven together begins to tell a really full and rich story. This is how we’re approaching the America 250th. So, one piece at a time across the season. Sometimes they’re clustered together, sometimes they’re contextualized with core repertoire, but it’s an opportunity for our audiences to hear something like three dozen works by American composers across the 25-26 season. So that’s one area of exploration, and it’s natural because it all started here.
Brian McCreath And thank you, by the way, in the press release for adding the word to our lexicon “semi-quincentennial.” [Smith laughs] It’s something we all should learn about [McCreath chuckles] But before we move on to other things, let’s touch on a few of the highlights that are going to come up in that “collection,” if you will, of repertoire. So, one of the things that really stands out is an All-John Williams program. What more American composer is there than John Williams? I mean we could argue that, but certainly to collect John Williams’s mostly concert music with Emanuel Ax and Gil Shaham seems like a great way to really inject some of the American spirit into this.
Chad Smith And of course, John has a very special relationship with Boston, going back to when he was appointed the Principal Conductor of the Pops. And John has this duality, like so many great composers. He’s obviously written the soundtrack to our lives with probably every great film score in the past 50 years penned by John Williams. But he’s also written these really important concert works that explore this idea of the emerging sound worlds and these contrasts that exist within the American musical tradition. On that program, we’ll be presenting his new Piano Concerto, which is going to be played by Manny Ax and is inspired by three great jazz artists—
Brian McCreath Which we’ll hear at Tanglewood in its world premiere this summer.
Chad Smith Exactly. A piece that is inspired by the natural world and then, of course, some really great film scores as well: the suite from Catch Me If You Can and Close Encounters [ of the Third Kind]. So, you see that duality in his work, but you also see it in many of the other composers that we’re exploring. You see it in Carlos [Simon]'s work. He’s also deeply inspired by film music. But he’s writing for us a piece called The Good News Mass, and that’s going to anchor both our “E Pluribus Unum,” our America 250th exploration, but also a secondary thread of inquiry that we’re looking at called “Faith in Our Time.”
“Faith in our Time”
Chad Smith “Faith in our Time,” again, is a multi-year look at how various faith traditions have inspired these monumental pieces from the classical music canon, probably going back to the 10th or 11th century in some French monastery with Gregorian chant. But to this day, various faith traditions and the divine continue to inspire these masterful works. So, we’ll see some of those. Obviously, Carlos’s Mass, but earlier in the season, we’re going to see the Beethoven Missa solemnis, which is an important part of the canon. It’s an austere and extraordinary work. And it also happens to connect back to another part of our history that we’re exploring in the season, which is Boston Symphony Hall’s 125th anniversary. In 1900, when Symphony Hall opened, this glorious building opened with a performance of Missa solemnis.
Brian McCreath That sounds amazing. And there’s some other things to talk about with that Symphony Hall anniversary, but to stick with America 250, we always love the fact that Andris loves opera. And as you have mentioned to me in the past, he loves doing concert opera, which casts a different angle on what we might see in any particular opera. Tell me about the choice of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa. That to me feels like, wow, that’s maybe unexpected in the huge choice of operatic material, first of all. And even in American opera, it’s not one that I necessarily would have drawn to first. So, tell me about that choice.
Chad Smith Well look, I think this is also where we see the brilliance of Andris, right? That this piece of American operatic history is going through a major reconsideration. I think of it as one of the great pieces of American music theater. But for us to be able to hear this piece by one of most important 20th century American composers in that romantic sound... But it’s contrasted, again, with Andris exploring one of other iconic American operas later in the season with music from John Adams’s Nixon in China. So, you see these two competing elements about the operatic tradition in this country: the big, almost old European romantic style, which is where Vanessa comes from, and this new—it used to be called “news opera” or “current event opera,” that John Adams really invented back in the 1980s.
Brian McCreath And I think that Vanessa is a great way for the audience that may know Adagio for Strings, maybe even the Violin Concerto of Barber, these amazing pieces, but maybe this audience will enjoy understanding more the breadth that Samuel Barber brings to his music. Also, while we’re on the topic, we’ll just drop in the name check here of Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson on that Nixon in China concert.
Chad Smith Yeah, it’s true.
Brian McCreath Yeah, so one more thing, though, about the American aspect of the season. You have Johnny Gandelsman coming in, not as a soloist with the orchestra, this amazing violinist and thinker. Johnny is kind of one of the most original thinkers. Tell me about what his role is in January.
Chad Smith So Johnny is going to be here, and he has a project where he does a number of concerts over the course of two weeks that he’s going to be weaving through our season, and it’s going to be a part of our humanities program. How do we contextualize this exploration of American music, understanding that we can’t even come close to describing what American music is in a couple of weeks or even in 36 pieces across the season? But Johnny’s able to weave various musical traditions into these recitals that are going to be played in spaces around the city. So, Johnny’s one example of that.
Augustin Hadelich, Artist in Residence
Chad Smith We have an Artist in Residence this year, Augustin Hadelich, and Augustin is going to be exploring many different threads: contemporary violin concertos, a concerto by Thomas Adès, Concentric Paths, as well as John Adams’s remarkable piece, his Violin Concerto from the early 90s. But Augustin’s also going to do a recital over at MIT, at that remarkable new performance space there, again looking at the American musical tradition. So, we’re trying to give perspectives into this work from many different vantage points, not just from the orchestral perspective and the orchestral scores, but also from the vocal and operatic perspective, from the perspective of solo recital repertoire, through popular entertainment. There’s a whole series of explorations we’ll be looking at in our Boston Pops series across the year. So, lots of different ways that we’re looking at this.
Brian McCreath So one of the things, though, about this—and Augustin is an amazing violinist, we know him well at the station. He’s been to Boston and Tanglewood many times. I’ve got to tell you, when he played at Tanglewood last summer and I was watching from where I was sitting in the radio booth, watching people run to the side of the Shed so they could maybe get an autograph, it was one of the most memorable things I’ve seen at Tanglewood. People were freaked out, they just had to go meet Augustin! He’s really a magnetic performer. But anyway, I’m getting a little bit off—
Chad Smith No, no, I agree with you. I love it! [McCreath laughs] I have to go in and out that door, and so having to navigate a sea of people who are so excited about what they just heard that they want to meet the artist, and the generosity of Augustin, and indeed the generosity of all of the artists who perform with the BSO is remarkable. The willingness to really stand out there, sometimes in the rain, signing programs and shaking hands... But Augustin is an extraordinary person.
Brian McCreath But to get myself back on track, just the concept of Artist in Residence, that’s not something that the BSO has undertaken very often if at all, but it is something other orchestras do. And you’re an observer of orchestras, you’ve been at the LA [Philharmonic] before coming here. What is the role, just in the abstract, of an Artist in Residence for any orchestra? And what led you to the decision to engage Augustin in this way for this year?
Chad Smith Yeah, so for me, an Artist in Residence is another way for our audiences to get to know the work that we do through the perspective of one person. So often these great artists come, and they play a concerto, and then they’re on to the next city the next week, right? And that’s natural in our business. But if our audiences here in Boston have multiple opportunities to understand what makes Augustin Hadelich tick, they can hear the way that he approaches these contemporary pieces, the way that he thinks about chamber music and his performance with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, in the way that he collaborates with a pianist in a solo recital. These are windows into his artistry that you don’t see just when you come to Symphony Hall and hear him play a concerto. A concerto that he plays gloriously, I will say. But it’s that opportunity for us to create even more windows into our world, and festivals are one way we do it. Doing symphonic cycles is another way. Artists in Residence is a way [to hear] immersion weekends, humanities programming, you’ll see across the season. And as we continue to move our programming forward, more and more of these deeper explorations of ideas and the artists who make those ideas come to life, play out in our seasons.
“Where Words End: Music and the Natural World”
Brian McCreath So another one of these broad categories that will take place over many concerts over the course of months of this season, and even, if I understand correctly, beyond, is this idea of connecting with expressions of the natural world. And there’s some really fascinating things here. I mean we might expect (and rightly so) the Pastoral Symphony by Beethoven. That’s sort of the iconic music-and-nature piece. But there are other things that are coming that I find really, really enticing. Tell me a little bit about that idea, and again, what led you to that as one of the framing devices for programs in the season?
Chad Smith All of these ideas that we’re exploring are reactions to where artists are making music. So, this is a reflection of where composers are today, whether that’s in “E Pluribus Unum” or that’s “Faith in Our Time,” and it’s certainly in our exploration of the natural world. We’re calling it “Where Words End.” So many composers, the most established composers, the composers who are in their 80s, the composers who are in their teens, they’re trying to wrap their arms around humanity’s relationship with the natural world, and the changing relationship. Very specifically, we wanted to include some of those historical works. When Beethoven was living in Vienna and he wrote the Pastoral Symphony, it was at a time of tremendous turmoil in Vienna, and he needed to seek the solace that he found in the natural world to balance out the chaos of Vienna in... let’s call it 1810 or whatever year it was. But today and certainly in the 20th century as we’ve seen changes in climate, and we’ve seen how our activities can alter our environment, composers and artists are responding to that too. So, this exploration of “Where Words End” looks at both sides of that. There’s a piece by John Williams called TreeSong, which is inspired by this Metasequoia tree which is in the Boston Public Garden. There’s a piece by Thomas Adès exploring water. It’s a piece he calls Aquifer. Gabriela Smith, who is one of the most interesting young composers, a California-based composer, has a piece called the Bioluminescence Chaconne. So many artists are looking at this and we want our audiences to be able to hear these pieces and see where our world is.
Brian McCreath And to be clear, this is not something that’s just happening this season. It’s going to go on because it is such a rich theme within music. I’m so glad that you framed the Pastoral Symphony that way because there’s a temptation, especially if you have the experience of Tanglewood, [that this piece is] just this very pleasant, very beautiful piece in a beautiful surrounding, maybe. Or as heard in January, it is one of these great nine symphonies. But you’re adding this cultural context to your description that I think also applies to these other pieces that, yeah, our world kind of feels chaotic a lot of the time right now, to us. And these are some of those pieces that can reground us, recenter us.
Chad Smith And again, for Beethoven, we were able to experience this through this deep exploration of the symphonies in January, one after the other. You think about the Eroica, which was a deeply political response to the Napoleonic Wars and Napoleon crowning himself emperor. And then there’s the Fourth, and then, of course, there’s the Fifth with fate. But after the Fifth, he wrote the Sixth [the Pastoral], right? And that sounds, you know, obvious. After the Fifth he wrote Sixth. But the Sixth is a departure, and that thunderstorm means something, that babbling brook means something. Why did he choose to describe those elements of nature in a way that he had never done before? So, I think we can use Beethoven as a source, says everyone over the past 200 years. “You can use the Beethoven as the source.” [McCreath laughs] But it is a way for us to see how composers are using the natural world today to inspire their works and provoke questions, maybe send a warning or send a love letter to a tree or whatever it is. But I think this is something that deserves our presentation because it’s so much at the heart of where so many composers are.
The Boston Pops
Brian McCreath I’d love to talk about nature and music forever, but there’s also a really important part of this season that I want to get to which is what the Boston Pops is doing, because it’s different. I think you began this already, this season and maybe even before, but the fact that the Pops is not being limited to a spring season in May and June and a holiday season in December, the Pops is spreading out. It’s taking advantage of some other parts of the year that mean something to people and bringing the Pops celebration to the hall. So, tell me about how the thinking worked with that as well.
Chad Smith Well, the Pops is this remarkable part of the Boston Symphony. And I always say that the Boston Symphony was founded in 1881, and the Boston Pops was founded in 1885. The founder, Henry Lee Higginson, created this entity called the Boston Pops with the goal of welcoming even more people into the orchestral music, welcoming popular entertainment into our space, and creating opportunities for everyone, not just an elite few, to enjoy this great orchestra. And so, we’re really reinvesting in that idea, creating that welcome and really taking a broad approach to the repertoire that the Pops play. So last year, we did a Day of the Dead concert. We’re going to be bringing that back this year in partnership with our friends in the Mexican community here in Boston. But we’re also doing a deep exploration of the music of Puerto Rico. And that’s going to start in the opening week, in the beginning of our season, and the Boston Pops will play an evening of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s music with the great Broadway singer Mandy Gonzalez. And then later in the season, we’re exploring the music of Robert Sierra and Angélica Negrón and leading up to a joint invitation from the Boston Symphony and IBA, the Puerto Rican Service Organization in Boston, to present the Puerto Rico Symphony in Symphony Hall and in community concerts and community events across our city. So, this is a way, again, that the Boston Pops is continuing to expand its work. We’re continuing to find partnerships and collaborations that allow even more people to experience the specialness of this music in this place.
Brian McCreath And I’m glad again that you started your thoughts about this with the founding of the Boston Pops, because it wasn’t just different programs, it was a whole different atmosphere, and that’s what’s so magic about the Pops, that Keith and the musicians create this different feeling in the hall. Whether you can go to the trouble of resetting the hall with the tables or not, there’s still a different atmosphere. So, when it’s a Lunar New Year concert or a Celtic concert in March, which these are going to be part of the season, these are celebrations that I think people are going to really latch onto.
Visiting Orchestras
Brian McCreath And thank you, you’re so good at the segues here, Chad, because you gave me a great segue to talk about another visiting orchestra, which is, again, something that the BSO hasn’t traditionally done, which is to co-present other orchestras, in this case, the Vienna Philharmonic, I mean, holy cow! [Smith laughs]
Chad Smith Well, look, we’re very, very lucky here at the BSO. Our Music Director has a long relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic and tours with them quite often. And so, this is an opportunity for us at the Boston Symphony to celebrate Andris and his relationship with that great orchestra and to partner with the Celebrity Series in bringing this great orchestra to Boston. This is a way for us to make that happen. And in fact, the BSO is going and playing at the Musikverein, which is where the Vienna Philharmonic performs. We’re going there in about a month so it’s a nice way to have that handshake across the Atlantic. It is going to be something new for us and I think something that we’re really looking at doing more of, potentially. Later in the season we’re also presenting the orchestra from the Interlochen Arts Academy.
Brian McCreath Yes, yes.
Chad Smith The Interlochen Arts Academy is a great youth ensemble. They have an academy in Michigan, and they have a summer program, one of the finest summer programs for high school musicians, and they are touring to Philadelphia and to Boston as a part of their 250th celebration [of America]. And they’re doing it with a soloist that you might know, Yo-Yo Ma.
Brian McCreath Yeah, we’ve heard of him. [Smith and McCreath chuckle]
Chad Smith So we were asked if we would present the orchestra in Symphony Hall, and we’re delighted to do so. Yo-Yo is going to be playing a new concerto by Wynton Marsalis. There’s an incredible performance of the Ives Fourth Symphony and there will be lots of community engagement work and schools work in the lead-up to that presentation.
Brian McCreath And Cristian Mӑcelaru, their conductor, is going to be part of that program as well. Really exciting conductor.
Chad Smith Exactly.
The Boston Symphony Chamber Players
Brian McCreath Let’s talk a little bit about the Chamber Players because you have Nathan Cole as the concertmaster now, really taking hold here in Boston and really beginning his leadership duties. And part of that is the Chamber Players, which has a five-concert series through the course of the season. And yet, if we could set up Venn diagrams for this season, we would have some overlap here again with the Symphony Hall 125 and with the American 250, but the Chamber Players, now being led by Nathan Cole, is a big part of the season as well.
Chad Smith Absolutely, and this is again something that defines the Boston Symphony. The Boston Symphony Chamber Players is among the finest chamber ensembles in the world, and it is a part of our work and this series that the players give every year, for me it’s always a highlight of the season. But you’ll see how even these concerts are woven into the residencies with Augustin Hadelich, they’re woven into some of these thematic explorations. But it’s an intimate way for our audiences to get to know these remarkable players. And Nathan is exciting. It’s going to be exciting to have that new leadership. But each and every one of the principal players who make up the Boston Symphony Chamber Players is a soloist in and of himself or herself. The first program looks at music that was written at the turn of the century at about the same time that Symphony Hall was created in 1900.
Brian McCreath [Charles] Loeffler and Amy Beach, these composers that we don’t get to hear really all that often, but they’re going to come to life in this Chamber Players program.
Chad Smith Another is an All-Mozart program that we’re going to be doing with the great [pianist] Inon Barnatan. There are so many great programs for our audiences to get to know, at a more personal and intimate level, the musicians of the BSO.
Brian McCreath And that’s the thing, right? The orchestra audiences come to Symphony Hall, and they hear these great orchestral masterpieces and sometimes, yes, there are players, especially the concertmaster, but there are players who stand out with solos. They get solo bows at the end of the concert, and that’s all good and everything. But yeah, to see them interacting, as I have been lucky to do many times, to see the interacting in a chamber music environment is a really special experience. So yeah, I’m looking forward to Nathan’s direction of that ensemble.
New Music
Brian McCreath It wouldn’t be a Boston Symphony season without a pretty serious presence of new music, and you detailed a lot of what Carlos Simon, Composer Chair, is going to be doing. But there’s also a lot of other new works that are coming up. I’ll admit, the one that really jumped out at me is Esa-Pekka Salonen, [who] wrote a horn concerto.
Chad Smith So Esa-Pekka was a horn player in his youth.
Brian McCreath Oh I didn’t even know that!
Chad Smith So when he was at the Sibelius Academy, he was a horn player, and some of his very earliest works are these pieces called Yta: Yta I, Yta II, and they’re very modernist horn pieces. But he really quickly began conducting when he was a student at the Sibelius Academy. So, for us to be able to present the U.S. premiere of this horn concerto is a really big deal, and it’s written for Stefan Dohr, the very, very fine horn player from the Berlin Philharmonic. But what I also love about this program is, it’s so Esa-Pekka, because the horn concerto is inspired by Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony. There are elements of the horn concerto which draw upon the music from Brucker Four, and so he said, “Could we do Bruckner Four on the second half?” And I said, “Absolutely.” This is the kind of thoughtful interwoven programming that he’s known for.
Brian McCreath Other composers include Tania León, whose music we recently heard in a commission, and Andrew Norman writing a piece as well for the Jussen brothers.
Chad Smith And I will say that Andrew is just one of the most creative composers working today. He’s written some of the most thoughtful, sometimes complex, but always accessible works. And the Jussen brothers are a sensation. I heard them at Tanglewood for the first time maybe two summers ago and they knocked my socks off. So, for us to have this double piano concerto for these players written by Andrew, it’s going to be a highlight of the season.
Brian McCreath Yeah, a world premiere?
Chad Smith Yeah.
Brian McCreath Fantastic. Chad, we could go on forever talking about these things, but there are so many more details available at the BSO website and ways of looking at the program, again, not just concert by concert, but theme by theme, and by the ways that these things overlap in the Venn diagram of my imagination. So, thank you so much.
Chad Smith Brian, thank you. It is always a pleasure to be here, and I so appreciate your insight into the season, so thank you.
Copyright 2025 WCRB
