The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra has announced CSO Music Director Designate Cristian Mǎcelaru’s first season as music director. The 2025-26 season celebrates the CSO and America’s multi-cultural history with revered classics, new and commissioned works, including new poetry from former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove and world-class soloists, including CSO principal players.
“This is a celebration of where the orchestra has arrived under Music Director Laureate Louis Langrée and a celebration of us moving forward,” Mǎcelaru told CityBeat.
An impressive roster of guest artists includes cellist Yo-Yo Ma; pianists Hélène Grimaud and Daniil Trifonov; and violinists Renaud Capuçon, Esther Yoo and Tessa Lark. Kristiina Poska, Oksana Lyniv, Tabita Berglund and Samuel Lee debut as guest conductors. Langrée returns for two engagements; Matthias Pintscher, Dame Jane Glover and James Conlon also return.
The season continues to showcase the CSO’s versatility, with orchestral works by Beethoven, Mozart, Berlioz, Brahms, Mahler, Mendelsohn and Shostakovich; choral masterpieces by Handel and Rachmaninoff; Stravinsky’s ballets Petrushka and The Firebird; and commissions by Lisa Bielawa and Daniel Bjarnason and poetry by Dove.
Mǎcelaru’s debut program on Oct. 3-4 exemplifies what’s in store. English composer Anna Clyne’s Abstractions (2016) opens the program, followed by Gershwin’s Concerto in F, concluding with Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier suite. “I’ve been an advocate and an admirer of Anna Clyne’s music for many years and I’m excited to introduce her music to our audiences,” Mǎcelaru says.
“It’s so important to acknowledge what has been created so we can understand how we build on that,” he continues. “That’s why Strauss is there — nothing is more virtuosic for an orchestra to play than that.”
Grimaud performs the Gershwin concerto, a work Mǎcelaru describes as extremely sophisticated with “an unbelievable trumpet solo in the second movement.”
Mǎcelaru continues a deep dive into American music history in November, leading Dvořák’s 7th Symphony, Tales: A Folklore Symphony by Kennedy Center Composer-in-Residence Carlos Simon, Copland’s “Variations on a Shaker Melody” from Appalachian Spring and Bielawa’s violin concerto Pulse with Kentucky native Tessa Lark making her CSO debut.
The program reflects another thematic element, incorporating American music into European forms and emerging with a unique American sound.
“With American music, we don’t eliminate an entire genre just because we’re not used to it,” Mǎcelaru says. “Simon’s symphony is very powerful based on songs he grew up with in an African American church where his father was a minister. Lisa’s piece is grounded in Roots music and so is Tessa Lark, a Kentucky native.”
Beloved cellist and world music advocate Yo-Yo Ma returns for a special concert with Mǎcelaru in November. The following month, Mǎcelaru revives a Christmas tradition with Handel’s Messiah, with the May Festival Chorus and vocal soloists Lauren Snouffer, Sasha Cooke, Nicholas Phan and Jonathan Lemalu.
“For me, Messiah is part of the Christmas season and it’s my musical comfort food!” Mǎcelaru says. “We have a spectacular cast, the top of the top.”
In January, Mǎcelaru and the CSO honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s memory with American music featuring the CSO premiere of selections from Margaret Bonds’ “Montgomery Variations,” a series of movements based on historic events in the civil rights movement in Alabama, from 1955 to 1963, when Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed, killing four little girls. Bass Morris Robinson will be a soloist and narrator.
“We have to remember the unpleasant parts of our history,” says Mǎcelaru. “If works like this spark a conversation, then it does its job.”
Dove reads poetry commissioned to accompany Samuel Barber’s powerful “Adagio for Strings,” and the concert closes with more selections from Marsalis’s Blues Symphony.
In his interview with CityBeat, Mǎcelaru emphasized narratives as a crucial element in programming and audience response, and narratives are a vital theme for the season.
“Rita Dove’s poetry is one example and the other is Stravinsky’s Firebird, a ballet based on a Russian folktale.” Mǎcelaru conducts the work in April 2026, featuring South African director-producer Janni Younge’s puppet theater production that was canceled last year. He knows the production well and toured it in the U.S. He hopes it will draw young gamers and their parents.
“Teens who have grown up with spectacular imagery from video games will connect to this concept. The puppets look like images from video games and it’s absolutely breathtaking. When the firebird opens its wings, it takes up the entire stage.”
Glover leads an all-Mozart program, followed by Pintscher conducting Rachmaninoff’s choral symphony The Bells, featuring the May Festival Chorus and soloists
Langrée makes two appearances, first in November as he leads the orchestra in Stravinsky’s score for the ballet Petrushka and highlights the CSO principal wind players in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Four Winds. He returns in March to lead Brahms and Schuman, featuring Clayton Stephenson, winner of the first annual Nina Simone Piano Competition.
May Festival Music Director Laureate James Conlon leads works by Beethoven, Hadyn and Mozart in March with Capuçon.
Throughout the season, audiences will hear additional contemporary compositions by Jennifer Higdon, Evgeni Orkin, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Julia Adolphe and Margaret Brouwer, as well as a work by 19th-century French composer Louise Ferrenc’s “Overture No. 2,” a CSO debut.
It’s all about balancing the known with the creative unknown, Mǎcelaru says. He adds he sees his leadership role as a collaborator and also in terms of family roles.
“I’m like a parent, finding ways to widen perspectives, in my case, through music,” he says, adding with a grin, “And it’s also my job to be the cool uncle who will bring the cotton candy.”
To learn more about CSO’s 2025-26 season, visit cincinnatisymphony.org.
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This article appears in Feb 5-18, 2025.