Gustavo Dudamel does not officially take over as the New York Philharmonic’s music and artistic director until fall 2026. But he will be a fixture on the podium in the orchestra’s coming season, leading six weeks of concerts and several world premieres, the ensemble announced on Tuesday.
Matías Tarnopolsky, the Philharmonic’s president and chief executive, said that the new season, which includes a celebration of the 250th birthday of the United States as well as a centennial tribute to the eminent French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, “gives us a glimpse into a supremely exciting, joyful and embracing future with Gustavo Dudamel.”
Dudamel will lead the world or local premieres of an oratorio by David Lang based on Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations”; an orchestral reimagining of Frederic Rzewski’s “The People United Will Never Be Defeated”; and a choral work by Ellen Reid, which the Philharmonic commissioned with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where Dudamel is the music and artistic director through the end of next season.
At the opening night concert, in September, Dudamel will be on the podium with Yunchan Lim as the soloist in Bartok’s Piano Concerto No. 3. The cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason will serve as the Philharmonic’s artist in residence; Barbara Hannigan will make her conducting debut with the ensemble; and stars like the violinist Joshua Bell, the pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet and the violinist Nicola Benedetti will return.
Here are 10 highlights of the coming season, chosen by critics for The New York Times. JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ
Boulez Centennial, Oct. 3-11
The Philharmonic will celebrate the centennial of the composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, a former music director of the orchestra’s, with two programs. First, Pierre-Laurent Aimard will present some of the composer’s early Notations for piano, and Esa-Pekka Salonen will conduct Boulez’s later orchestral adaptations of those pieces, alongside works by Debussy. The following week, dancers choreographed by Benjamin Millepied will accompany Salonen and the orchestra in Boulez’s “Rituel in Memoriam Bruno Maderna.” SETH COLTER WALLS
Sound On: Chaya Czernowin, Oct. 29
The Philharmonic’s invaluable Sound On series will return with the local premiere of Chaya Czernowin’s “Unforeseen dusk: bones into wings,” which was first heard in Germany last year. It has the length of a symphony and, written for a large orchestra and six amplified voices, the scale of one. But it’s unlike any classic at David Geffen Hall: otherworldly yet intensely human, with enormous forces deployed selectively to get under your skin and directly into your heart. JOSHUA BARONE
Thomas de Hartmann’s Violin Concerto, Nov. 6-8
The Ukrainian-born composer Thomas de Hartmann wrote his Violin Concerto during Nazi occupation, in part to mourn the destruction World War II had brought to his home country. Joshua Bell, the star violinist, has recently championed the work and released a recording of it with Dalia Stasevska and the INSO-Lviv Symphony Orchestra last year. Bell and Stasevska will reunite to bring it to the Philharmonic, on a program with the U.S. premiere of the contemporary Ukrainian composer Bohdana Frolyak’s “Let There Be Light.” JOSHUA BARONE
Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Nov. 26-29
At the Kennedy Center in February, the pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet brought elegance and élan to the outrageous colors and peacockish technical displays of Aram Khachaturian’s Piano Concerto. At the Philharmonic next season, he’s joined in the piece once again by the conductor Stéphane Denève. Also on the program are Einojuhani Rautavaara’s “Cantus Arcticus,” with its birdsong tape recordings, and Lera Auerbach’s “Icarus,” both of which summon up winged things with an air of lonely mystery. OUSSAMA ZAHR
Thomas Adès’s ‘America (A Prophecy)’ Jan. 22-24
The British composer and conductor Thomas Adès turns his uncompromising gaze on America in a program that traverses vast emotional terrain. His own “America (A Prophecy),” in its New York premiere, draws on ancient Mayan texts set to a score of violent foreboding. Contrast that with the stylistic panopticon of Ives’s Orchestral Set No. 2, Kaija Saariaho’s hallucinatory “Oltra Mar” and the epic sweep of Rautavaara’s Piano Concerto No. 1, with Yuja Wang as the soloist. CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM
Manfred Honeck and María Dueñas, Jan. 29-Feb. 1
The astounding young musician María Dueñas makes her Philharmonic debut with Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, one of the great entries in the genre, alongside the conductor Manfred Honeck. In their 2023 recording of the piece, Dueñas brings suppleness to Beethoven’s endurance test and captivates in five different versions of the cadenza. Honeck’s 35-minute symphonic adaptation of Strauss’s “Elektra” fills out the program, conjuring some of the opera’s fire and venom without the need for a world-class soprano. OUSSAMA ZAHR
A George Lewis Premiere, April 8-10
The innovative and multifaceted composer-performer George Lewis has never had his music played on a Philharmonic subscription program, but that will change with a commission that features the superb piano-percussion quartet Yarn/Wire. In the same program, the conductor Kwamé Ryan will also make his subscription-series debut, leading music including a trio of pieces sung by the elegant soprano Golda Schultz: arias by Stravinsky and Carlisle Floyd, and Barber’s atmospheric “Knoxville: Summer of 1915.” ZACHARY WOOLFE
Barbara Hannigan, April 23-25
Since 2011, the fiercely inventive soprano Barbara Hannigan has not only made a name for herself as a conductor, but also invented a new hybrid art form simultaneously singing and leading an orchestra without breaking character. Here, she takes on the febrile protagonist in Poulenc’s mono-psychodrama “La Voix Humaine” in a staged production tailored to her dramatic powers. CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM
‘The People United Will Never Be Defeated,’ May 12-17
Mixing leftist politics with virtuosic musicality, Frederic Rzewski (1938-2021) wrote a masterpiece in 1975 with his hourlong variations on the Chilean protest song “The People United Will Never Be Defeated.” The work is for solo piano, but the Philharmonic has audaciously commissioned an orchestral version — moreover, a crowdsourced one, with the arranging honors shared among a distinguished group of over a dozen composers, including Tania León, Andrew Norman, Conrad Tao and Maria Schneider. ZACHARY WOOLFE
Sound On: Nathalie Joachim, May 22
Earlier this season, I found Joachim’s recent cello concerto to be a highlight of the Philharmonic’s programing. Next spring, the orchestra will bring her back for a world premiere. While details are slight regarding what exactly Joachim will be presenting at her Sound On show, we do know that she will be joining the performance. Considering her skills as a flutist and a vocalist, that’s a tantalizing prospect. SETH COLTER WALLS
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