Sir Antonio Pappano: The 2026/27 Season

In our 2026/27 season, LSO Chief Conductor Sir Antonio Pappano tackles some of the great symphonic works – from Bruckner’s monumental Ninth to Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ Symphony – alongside world premieres from Hannah Kendall, Edmund Finnis and Dai Fujikura.

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Together with the London Symphony Orchestra, I have decided to broaden the canvas, having focused so much on British music – which will always be a thread – during my tenure so far. We’re coming to the end of the Vaughan Williams cycle, something that’s been such a key factor for me personally in terms of discovery, and now are going to spread our wings, with more Shostakovich, Mahler and Tchaikovsky. Since a lot of British music is influenced by the Germans, and the 2025/26 season ended with Tristan and Isolde (perhaps the most influential piece of music ever), I think the Orchestra is really developing their sense of where everything belongs historically.

Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony carries on from the Fourth, in the sense that destiny and fate is very much a part of what every human being has to deal with in life. It’s a piece that he came to despise because he thought it was too overblown, but he changed his mind later after a series of particularly good performances that he conducted. It’s one of his most popular pieces, because there’s no question that it has a journey, evolving over time through challenges and obstacles, and eventually arriving at victory. Because of its slow movement – the heart of the symphony with this famous horn solo – it’s very romantic, but there’s a spiritual element too. There’s a bipolarity in Tchaikovsky’s music that I find so interesting, and so does the public. It’s so human, flawed and even modern. Having done the Sixth and Fourth in the past season, I’m thrilled to complete the trilogy of his late symphonies.

This is the first time I’ll conduct Bruckner with the Orchestra, but he’s no stranger to me, having conducted much of his music in Rome. The Ninth Symphony he dedicated to ‘my beloved God’, having dedicated the Seventh Symphony to King Ludwig and the Eighth Symphony to the Emperor. This is something else, it’s his own farewell to life. It has a tread, majesty and a humility which is incredibly disarming. We speak of Bruckner as an architect: he builds cathedrals of music, but the humanity and emotional impact of this music is so strong.

Shostakovich called his Eighth Symphony (together with the Seventh) his two ‘requiems’, not only for the people who died during the war but in commemoration of the people who died before. It was a statement about Stalin’s reign and therefore quite bleak. It’s really a piece about the Russian people and their suffering. Between Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Shostakovich and Mahler with his ‘Resurrection’ Symphony, there’s a strong spiritual element, and it’s important for me to be able to commune with those elements.

I truly believe that the music of the past informs that of the future, and present-day music informs our understanding of the past. This season we have five new works, all with different personalities. Dai Fujikura, with Amber Alchemy, creates textures in the Orchestra which I’ve never seen before – it’s almost as though I’m working with liquid instead of notes! Edmund Finnis has composed a new Cello Concerto for Sheku Kanneh-Mason. The tempo heading for the first movement is ‘radiant’, and I think that tells you everything. The Orchestra play mostly long, still noted against a very florid cello, and it has a suspended quality.

Hannah Kendall has written a new piece for us. Having been a singer, she’s very operatic in her gestures, and the unexpected sounds of her native Guiana are there. Bernard Foccroulle, a Belgian organist and composer, has written a piece about Inuit culture and the forces of nature in its stillness, movement and majesty. Finally, the new music from Richard Dubugnon is filled with panache, extravagance and virtuosic use of the Orchestra, and knowledge of what will capture the audience’s imagination.

This season, we conclude the Vaughan Williams cycle with Symphonies Nos 3, 7 and 8. The title of Symphony No 3 (A Pastoral Symphony) gives completely the wrong idea of what this piece is about. This is truly a war piece and it’s extremely moving; it expresses his feelings about war in a more nuanced way than in the Fourth and Sixth. Symphonies Nos 7 and 8 are less well known, but I am very much looking forward to discovering how they fit into the complete cycle. For the Seventh, (Sinfonia Antartica), I’ll use all my experience from having visited the Antarctic recently! The characters of the Vaughan Williams symphonies are so different from one another – the cycle has been something really epic for me, and a real sense of adventure has pervaded this whole experience.

I have conducted this piece a lot, but not for many years. It is a key work in Verdi’s oeuvre, and although it has very few notes compared to other operas, it has all the right ones! La traviata is the first modern opera; it’s so important to me. Its dramaturgy, the characters, the confrontations, the duets and the solo arias are all iconic, but it’s very challenging because it’s not a symphonic work. Unlike Tristan and Isolde, where the orchestra would shine regardless, you absolutely need the singers! But the orchestra still has a tremendous importance in terms of energy, colour and nuance. It’s so often performed, but I keep coming back to it because it is an essential work in the operatic canon.