The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, under the leadership of Music Director Manfred Honeck, is ready to deliver a 2025-2026 concert season full of electrifying performances, profound emotional depth, and unforgettable music-making. We’re diving into Honeck’s own vision and insights, previewing the key programs, the most exciting guest artists, and the pieces that are set to define this upcoming musical season. Explore the compelling highlights that help cement the the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra reputation.

Manfred Honeck Picks His Top 5 Moments of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s Season

Carnegie Hall and Shostakovich’s Fifth

From Thanksgiving through December, our schedule is as busy as it is exciting. On December 2nd, we perform the program that we will take the very next morning to Carnegie Hall in New York, then are back at Heinz Hall for more performances that weekend featuring our concertmaster, David McCarroll, playing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, for which we won the 2018 GRAMMY, anchors all these concerts.

Gautier Capuçon’s Debut

I have performed with Gautier Capuçon on PSO’s European tours, but in February he comes to debut in Pittsburgh with the king of cello concertos: Dvořák’s Cello Concerto. Our performances in Europe were some of my favorites of touring, and I cannot wait for Pittsburgh audiences to hear this incredible cellist. On the first half, I also conduct Brahms’ gentle and joyful Second Symphony.

Bruckner’s Eighth

There are many concerts I would recommend this season, but if you were forced to only pick one, I would say come and hear your symphony perform Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony. For me, this is a deeply personal work, one I feel I have been preparing for over the course of my career, and I finally feel ready. The adagio movement in this work is, to me, one of music’s greatest meditations on death. The ending, in contrast, is one of the greatest resolutions.

Mahler’s Resurrection

One of the classical repertoire’s greatest visions for music and art is Mahler’s Second Symphony, nicknamed Resurrection. If you enjoy the sublimity of Beethoven’s Ninth, this symphony is really the next step. Of course, it is always fantastic to partner with the Mendelssohn Choir for grand works like Mahler’s. 

The America250 Festival

We end this season with a festival of all-American music. I am especially excited to partner with the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre on the suite from Copland’s Appalachian Spring, which is written in homage to this very place. I would also highlight the pairing of Copland’s Lincoln Portrait with John Adams’ The Wound-Dresser. In taking texts from Lincoln and Walt Whitman, both are very different meditations on the inheritance of America’s history. 

Story by Manfred Honeck
Featured Photo Courtesy of George Lange
Additional Photo Courtesy of JMilteer Photography

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