The 2024-25 season marks Marin Alsop’s sixth as Chief Conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. They launch the season together with a high-profile, eleven-city Japanese tour, appearing in Yokohama, Tokyo, Takamatsu, Aichi, Fukuoka, Niigata, Nagano, Osaka, Tokorozawa, Sapporo, and Hiroshima with a program of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, Jessie Montgomery’s Strum, and Mozart’s “Coronation” Concerto, featuring Hayato Sumino (Sep 7–19). Later in the fall, Alsop returns to Vienna for a program of new and recent music by Xenakis, John Luther Adams, and Nina Šenk (Oct 30). 

In the second season of her tenure as Artistic Director & Chief Conductor of Polish National Radio Symphony (NOSPR), Alsop leads five programs with the orchestra, in which Polish composers figure prominently. The Opening Night concert features Japanese pianist Hayato Sumino in concertos by Gershwin and Władysław Szpilman (Oct 4). Next, Alsop leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in accounts of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony; James Lee III’s Harriet Tubman tribute, Chuphshah! Harriet’s Drive to Canaan; and Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto, with Lukáš Vondráček as soloist (Oct 10 & 11). A related program, combining Chuphshah! with Prokofiev’s Fourth Symphony and Chopin’s First Piano Concerto, is the vehicle for the first of Alsop’s two programs as Music Director Laureate & OrchKids Founder of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (Oct 17–20). 

In the second season of her four-year appointment as Principal Guest Conductor of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, Alsop leads a program of music by Gustav and Alma Mahler at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall joined by soloist Sasha Cooke (Oct 24). With the Cincinnati Symphony, Alsop conducts a coupling of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, “Leningrad,” with Chichester Psalms by Bernstein, her former mentor (Nov 16 & 17). November also brings the inauguration of Alsop’s three-season appointment as Principal Guest Conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra with a five-concert Chinese tour (Nov 2–10). This kicks off with a program juxtaposing Beethoven and Brahms with modern settings of Tang Dynasty poetry at Beijing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts. Van Cliburn winner Haochen Zhang joins Alsop and the orchestra for piano concertos by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff in Hainan and Chengdu, where they perform side-by-side with the Chengdu Symphony.