RPO x Vasily Petrenko

For the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, turning 80 is both a celebration and a milestone as we look ahead to the next chapter. After eight decades, it’s safe to say that the Orchestra feels younger and fresher than ever. But it also has many stories to tell, and this 80th Anniversary Season places a way marker on our journey of discovery, giving us the opportunity to share those stories anew, together. It’s a season full of reflections, remembrances and evocations: music that celebrates music, and the musicians who make it. And above all, music that celebrates you, our audience – the people who make the music complete.

We’re launching our anniversary season in the magnificent Royal Albert Hall, with a brand-new fanfare from Errollyn Wallen CBE and Richard Strauss’ epic Ein Heldenleben. And the series continues across London, with performances at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall as well as my debut concerts as Music Director of the RPO at our Resident Home, Cadogan Hall. Stravinsky’s The Firebird: Suite, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ Symphony and Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture – these are just some of the musical tales we’ll be telling anew as the season unfolds. They’re pieces that we love to play and you love to hear, each with an unforgettable story of its own. Let us bring them alive for you in vivid colours.

But we won’t be doing it alone. From the Philharmonia Chorus to pianists Jan Lisiecki and Eric Lu, violinist Julia Fischer, presenter Leah Broad (hosting a concert of Mozart’s music in a brand-new format at Cadogan Hall) and many more of our friends, we’re making music with the artists we admire the most. And with you too, as we extend a huge, tuneful invitation to the musical celebration of the year. Come and join the party. 

Vasily Petrenko
RPO Music Director

Welcome to our 2025–26 London Season at the Royal Albert Hall and Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall.

When you have the privilege to conduct a great orchestra, you get used to thinking big. Naturally, I do my best to aim high: to share with you, our audience, the finest melodies, the strongest emotions, the most magnificent sounds. But for me, there’s another side to music-making, and in its own way, it’s a sort of miracle. You might be sitting in an iconic venue like the Royal Albert Hall or the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, surrounded by thousands of fellow listeners but as soon as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra starts to play, we have only one aim – to create music that speaks directly to you.

This season, we’re certainly thinking big again – playing music to make your ears tingle and your heart soar. The sonic splendour of Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie; the cosmic visions of Wagner’s Parsifal; the raw power of Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony; the joy of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, and the incredible, ecstatic Third Symphony of Scriabin – a rarely-heard Russian masterpiece that aims straight for heaven itself. And then we have the epic world of Gustav Mahler: three mighty symphonies that seem to embrace the whole of human life.

Vasily Petrenko
RPO Music Director