Cristian Mǎcelaru makes his official debut as the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s music director on Oct. 3 with a program that models his goals as a conductor and leader.
Mǎcelaru spoke to CityBeat from his native Romania, where he was on a brief vacation before gigs in Romania, Germany and France before he arrives in Cincinnati in late September.
“In my role as music director and the season’s curator, I want to make sure there’s a balanced approach to challenging ourselves, even when we hear familiar music,” he said. “I hope we’ll challenge our audiences just enough to maintain their perspectives and the context of how they listen to Beethoven or any of the composers we’ll introduce this season.”
Mǎcelaru’s vision for the entire season is holistic, with familiar classics informing contemporary music and rarely performed works.
The opening program leads off with Abstractions by Anna Clyne, a British-born, U.S.-based composer. “Anna is a composer that I’ve collaborated with and championed for many years,” Mǎcelaru said. “She writes in a way that is so mesmerizing, and this piece is such a beautiful reflection of her ability to use the orchestra in a very poetic and intimate way.”
Internationally acclaimed pianist Hélène Grimaud follows, performing Gershwin’s Concerto in F, much less familiar than Rhapsody in Blue.
“I’m a big fan of putting in a composition that is less performed, and this is one of them,” Mǎcelaru said. “Gershwin is a quintessentially American composer. He isn’t thought of as an intellectual composer but he’s extremely sophisticated. The concerto has so much sophistication in the thematic material, in the orchestration, in the way he takes motifs and changes them. And there’s an unbelievable trumpet solo in the second movement.”
Richard Strauss’s suite from his opera Der Rosenkavalier is the concert finale, and it’s the perfect contrast to Clyne’s introspective piece, according to Mǎcelaru.
“It’s so important to acknowledge what has been created so we can understand how we build on that,” he said. “The Rosenkavalier suite presents the orchestra in both intimate and virtuosic passages,” he continued. “That’s why Strauss is there: nothing is more virtuosic for an orchestra to play than that.”
“To be able to present the entire spectrum of the orchestra’s ability across different kinds of music is one thing that I really want to highlight with this concert.”
The job of music director encompasses all the season’s programs, and includes discussions with guest conductors, soloists and orchestra personnel across time zones and continents.
“We want every guest conductor to have the opportunity to bring to the Cincinnati Symphony the things that they are most passionate about, and they have the most expertise in,” Mǎcelaru explained. “The music always comes first.”
He highlighted Dame Jane Glover, renowned for her expertise in Mozart and the Classical repertoire, who makes her return the weekend after the season’s first concert.
“It’s an all-Mozart program, ranging from an opera overture to a chamber piece to a full symphony, again showing off the CSO’s ability to play a variety of Mozart works led by an artist the musicians respect so much,” he said.
CSO Conductor Laureate Louis Langrée returns in November to lead the orchestra in Stravinsky’s score for the ballet Petrushka, and later in the season, he returns to conduct Brahms and Schumann.
CSO Creative Partner Matthias Pintscher returns in November to ring the bells with performances of Rachmaninoff’s massive cantata The Bells, based on Edgar Allen Poe’s poem of the same name and Berlioz’s phantasmagoric Symphonie Fantastique.
Contemporary music and commissions are a priority for Mǎcelaru and are regularly featured throughout the 2025-26 season.
“For me, new music does so many wonderful things, touching on themes and areas of the music world that are difficult to express in other media,” he said. “A lot of the new music that we’re performing this season was already set before my time, but it’s also a reflection of what attracted me to the Cincinnati Symphony.
“I was impressed by the CSO’s progressive approach to commissioning and to performing contemporary music, which is why I’ll be conducting a lot of this new music this season. I strongly endorse new works and I’m so happy to be able to bring this new music to our community.”
Mǎcelaru is equally passionate about Baroque music, a result of studying violin with Sergiu Luca, a musical pioneer performing early music on period instruments.
“It’s no surprise that one of the first things that I will be doing is Handel’s Messiah because I have a very strong affinity for this style in my own playing as well as this repertoire, and this is something that is very close to my heart.”
It promises to be a holiday highlight with the always terrific May Festival Chorus and a roster of world-class soloists: Lauren Snouffer, Sasha Cooke, Nicholas Phan and Jonathan Lemalu.
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 theme from Appalachian Spring and Lisa 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 explained. “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. “
Other featured artists include legendary cellist Yo-Yo Ma in November, pianist Daniil Trifonov, bass Morris Robinson and conductors James Conlon and Roderick Cox. The 2026 season offers a powerful concert in January honoring the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., with select movements from Margaret Bonds’ Montgomery Variations and former poet laureate Rita Dove reading poetry commissioned by the CSO, inspired by Samuel Barber’s exquisite Adagio for Strings.
Mǎcelaru’s final concert in late April isn’t the season finale, but it’s a blaze of music and stagecraft. Stravinsky’s Firebird ballet is a spectacular production staged by award-winning puppet creator and director Janni Younge, postponed two years ago.
For Mǎcelaru, the entire season expresses his excitement about being a presence in Cincinnati.
“It’s the excitement for this new role in my life and hopefully the excitement that the audience will share for this new journey that we are beginning together so that we can discover yet one more color in this beautiful rainbow that is classical music.”
For more information about Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s 2025-26 season, visit cincinnatisymphony.org.
This story is featured in CityBeat’s Sept. 3 print edition.