The Wiener Symphoniker will present more than 160 concerts, opera performances and other appearances during the 2019-20 season. 

Philippe Jordan, in his last season, will take the stand as Music Director of the Orchestra nearly 40 times, and Lahav Shani, as Principal Guest Conductor, nine times. The Artist in Residence in 2019-20 will be the pianist Yefim Bronfman. The programme will include more than 120 works by 54 composers and, along with the great pillars of the symphonic repertoire, the Orchestra will also give the premiere and first performance of works by Mark Andre, Peter Ablinger, Péter Eötvös, and others. 

90 concerts in Vienna

In the coming season, the Concert Orchestra of the City of Vienna will again constitute the foundation of musical life in Vienna, the musical metropolis, with more than 90 appearances in its home town. Along with appearances in the established concert venues at the Wiener Konzerthaus and Musikverein and the Theater an der Wien, the Orchestra will again continue its popular “Grätzl” or neighbourhood concerts with guest performances at unusual venues within various Vienna districts. Moreover, almost 70 forthcoming concerts and opera performances in the rest of Austria and in Belgium, China, Germany, France, Croatia, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Hungary clearly prove the Orchestra’s international popularity.

Season focus: Brahms & Beethoven 

The Wiener Symphoniker under its Music Director Philippe Jordan will dedicate itself to the symphonies of Johannes Brahms: All four symphonies will be performed both within this year’s Bregenzer Festspiele and at the Wiener Musikverein concert hall in September 2019, when they will also be recorded for later release on CD. Furthermore, the composer’s two Piano Concertos, the Violin Concerto and the German Requiem will be included in the programme. In the second half of the season, the Wiener Symphoniker will celebrate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth with major focus on his works: Together with Philippe Jordan, it will reconstruct, inter alia, the legendary Orchestra Academy of 1808 at the Wiener Konzerthaus concert hall and perform the five Piano Concertos with their close friend and companion Rudolf Buchbinder. Themed “Milestones”, the Orchestra will present history-making pillars of the symphonic repertoire: Works that stand for turning points, developments and innovations in the history of music. For instance, Philippe Jordan will dedicate himself to the revival of Johann Sebastian Bach’s works by Felix Mendelssohn.

François-Xavier Roth will explore the Second Viennese School with, inter alia, Schönberg’s “Pelleas and Melisande” and Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, while the young German conductor Joana Mallwitz will present excerpts from Richard Wagner’s “The Valkyrie”. Sibelius’s First Symphony, Béla Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, or Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” will be further ground-breaking works in the formation of new and unmistakeable musical languages. At the end of the series and in conclusion of the season, there will be Gustav Mahler’s monumental Eighth Symphony, conducted by Philippe Jordan and featuring an international top ensemble of soloists around, among others, Camilla Nylund and Sarah Connolly. 

Collaboration with top-class guest conductors and internationally renowned soloists 

Along with its Music Director Philippe Jordan who, apart from concerts in Vienna, will also direct the Orchestra on tours in Belgium, China, France and Switzerland and other countries, a number of top-class guest conductors will again appear with the Wiener Symphoniker. Besides Lahav Shani, whose term as Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestra will end with the 2019-20 season, the Wiener Symphoniker will be pleased to welcome long-time friends such as Manfred Honeck, Alain Altinoglu, or François-Xavier Roth. Other than by Joana Mallwitt, the Wiener Symphoniker will also be conducted for the first time by Cornelius Meister, Philippe Herreweghe, and Ariane Matiakh. The soloists will be outstanding protagonists of current international musical life, such as Martha Argerich, Julia Fischer, Isabelle Faust, Igor Levit, Julian Rachlin, or Frank-Peter Zimmermann. 

Own cycles 

In addition to the cycles organised by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Wien, appearances as an opera orchestra at the Theater an der Wien, and as the Orchestra in Residence at the Bregenzer Festspiele, the Wiener Symphoniker will, this year again, present its own cycles in collaboration with the Wiener Konzerthaus. Besides the cycles of the Wiener Symphoniker, its traditional flagship, the successful series of morning performances with Barbara Rett and the festive gala concerts will also be continued. Under the new name of WienerSymphoniker@7, the successfully introduced music education programmes Vorhören [Performing for Listeners]! and Neu(es) Hören [New Listening/Listening Anew] will be carried on as well. The established Kammermusik-Fest, too, will again be held in 2019-20. 

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