VoxCarnyx

The RSNO 2025-26 Season Launch on Tuesday at the “New Auditorium” at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall? It looked more like the studio recording of an old-style Parkinson Show. 

On a rear platform soft seats awaited the RSNO’s cheery “mein host”, chief executive Alistair Mackie, and a line up of player guests. In place of Parky’s Harry Stoneham Five, an RSNO string nonet acted as the luminous backing to solo spots by showcased colleagues. A comic double act by smooth-talking principal trumpet Chris Hart and loopy sidekick, principal double bassist Nikita Naumov, broadened the showbiz vibe. Choreographed lighting and interwoven video clips projected a slick tech dimension. 

If presentation counted for anything, the assembled “studio audience” – “our payback to you, our supporters”, announced RSNO chairman Gregor Stewart – were amply rewarded.

In essence, this was a clever shop window exercise, reflecting a key area of activity the RSNO has turned to in its hour of need – the lucrative recording of film, television and video games soundtracks that has helped them allay the serious funding pressures all arts companies are currently facing – and the development of state-of-the-art studio facilities within its Glasgow Royal Concert Hall home. “Over the past year we’ve undertaken 37 such projects,” Mackie informed us, among them the soundtrack to Tom Cruise’s next Mission Impossible movie.

In line with that, previous seasons have seen a significant uptick in the inclusion of live film screenings – RSNO at the Movies – as part of the main concert portfolio. 2025-26 goes big screen in Glasgow and Edinburgh with Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Ghostbusters, Home Alone, How to Train Your Dragon and Gladiator. Add to that a couple of Pops concerts – a joint cross-cultural extravaganza by composer Rushi Zanjan’s Orchestral Qawwali with the RSNO and RSNO Chorus (Glasgow only), and Richard Kaufman conducting The Music of John Williams – and the broadest of tastes are well-catered for.

So much for the razzmatazz; what about the symphonic meat and veg? Central to the season’s 17 Classical Concerts is what music director Thomas Søndergård described, in a prerecorded message, as a theme exploring how music “Feels Like Home”. He cited Bruckner’s Symphony No 8 as one, how it “holds a place in my heart as the last concert I performed in [as a timpanist] during my studies”. 

In his six appearances with the orchestra during 2025-26, he’ll open the season with Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, later appearances bringing us Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, Mozart’s Great Mass in C minor and Tchaikovsky’s Fifth. In the same programme as the Bruckner, he’ll be joined by the astonishing horn soloist Felix Klieser – born without hands, but plays using his feet – in Richard Strauss’ Horn Concerto No 1. A link-up with the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland sees RCS soloists perform in Ravel’s mini-opera L’enfant et les sortilèges, and the fine young Scots pianist Ethan Loch venting his inner jazz in Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

This will also be a year in which principal guest conductor Patrick Hahn makes his mark with the orchestra, not least in a Season Finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and in Elgar’s Cello Concerto with soloist Kian Soltani. More intriguingly he stars as pianist/conductor in a jazz/classical interchange playing solo in George Antheil’s 1955 A Jazz Symphony before moving to the podium for Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F (spotlighting pianist Frank Dupree and his jazz trio) and Rachmaninov’s nostalgic Third Symphony.

Among the season’s newer conducting faces is featured artist Anthony Parnther, music director of the San Bernardino Symphony Orchestra, whose broad-based experience across the film medium, family concerts and the championing of underrepresented voices is reflected in a trio of October programmes that ranges from an all-action Family Concert – Fright at the Museum – to the world premiere of Matthew Rooke’s Tamboo-Bamboo Concerto for Timpani and Orchestra with charismatic RSNO timpanist Paul Philbert in the solo spot.

Philbert isn’t the only orchestral principal stepping into the limelight. Chris Hart performs Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto in November, while Nikita Naumov’s plays Koussevitzky’s Double Bass Concerto in one of the three RSNO Comes to Play concerts presented by Gillian Moore that sees the orchestra perform in wider community venues.

“We’re celebrating the sights and sounds of home,” Mackie reaffirms, which includes appearances by Nicola Benedetti (Elgar’s Violin Concerto) and mezzo soprano Karen Cargill (Beethoven’s Ninth and James MacMillan’s Three Scottish Songs). A Glasgow Sunday afternoon Chamber Series highlights RSNO and guest musicians, including an arrangement for string trio of Bach’s Goldberg Variations (trailed in part at Tuesday’s launch event), and the world premiere of Ethan Loch’s Fantasy of the Sea, performed by the composer with ballet dancer Antonia Cramb.

Other main season highlights include pianist Sir Stephen Hough, returning with conductor John Wilson to perform Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 1, soprano Anna Dennis who premieres a new work by Elena Langer with Estonian conductor Kristiina Poska, Lithuanian Giedrė Šlekytė conducting Mahler’s First Symphony and teaming up with Serbian soloist Nemenja Radulović for Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, and the impeccable James Ehnes as soloist in the UK premiere of James Newton Howard’s Violin Concerto No 2.

Full information on the RSNO’s 2025-26 Season is available at www.rsno.org.uk