By Sara Bright
Sir Antonio Pappano describes the moment he first raised a baton to the London Symphony Orchestra as though he were recounting a near-death experience. “I’ll never forget the first down beat,” he told the orchestra’s in-house publication, “when the orchestra just exploded with activity and panache and derring-do. It felt like I’d gotten into a Ferrari and pushed the gas pedal down!” That was 1996, in a London recording studio, and the car has only gathered speed since. Now in his second full season as LSO Chief Conductor, Pappano is driving the ensemble somewhere it has not been in quite the same way before – towards an operatic reckoning that may redefine what a world-class symphony orchestra owes to the stage.
A Season Built Around Wagner – and Already Sold Out
The season’s centrepiece is unmistakable. On 1 July and again on 12 July, Pappano and the LSO present concert performances of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde at the Barbican, with American tenor Clay Hilley and Polish-American soprano Sara Jakubiak in the title roles. Both dates are sold out – a remarkable fact for a five-hour opera performed without sets, costumes, or staging. The choice to close Pappano’s second season with Wagner is deliberate and personal. “Tristan is an iconic title,” Pappano said. “It’s a piece of music theatre that challenges not only the singers to give of their utmost, but the conductor and the orchestra as well.”
The decision to mount Tristan as a concert performance rather than a staged production is not a compromise – and it speaks to a broader revival of operatic culture across the UK. Pappano frames it as a liberation. “Wagner uses the orchestra as a psychological voice that enhances and elucidates what is being said on stage. But what is being said on stage is often difficult to fathom because he uses a very complex type of language full of images – light and dark – and there’s a sense of menace about it all.” In the Barbican Hall, stripped of theatrical spectacle, the orchestra becomes the drama itself.
Opera as Symphonic Duty
The Tristan performances are the culmination of a season that has consistently placed the human voice at its centre. This is not, however, a one-off gesture. Pappano has been clear that he sees opera as inseparable from the LSO’s identity. “Opera is very dear to my heart,” he said. “I think it’s something that the LSO needs to stay close to, and I certainly need to stay close to opera. I want the audience to share this lyric art with us because it adds a dimension to the season that is like no other.”
That conviction runs through the programming like a river. In January, Conductor Emeritus Sir Simon Rattle continues his acclaimed Janáček opera cycle with two performances of The Makropulos Affair, starring Marlis Petersen as Emilia Marty – to be recorded for future release on LSO Live. In May, Rattle returns to Wagner with the Siegfried Idyll and extracts from Götterdämmerung, featuring soprano Anja Kampe and mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong. And for 2026-27, Pappano has already announced Verdi’s La traviata in concert, confirming that this is a long-term strategic direction, not a seasonal flourish.
British Music as Home Ground
Pappano’s operatic ambitions are matched by an equally passionate commitment to the British repertoire. “This is my second season as chief conductor of the LSO, and I’m continuing my journey with British music,” he wrote. “I love this music with all my heart.” December’s concerts were devoted almost entirely to it: Vaughan Williams’ Flos Campi and Dona Nobis Pacem, Walton’s Viola Concerto with Spotlight Artist Antoine Tamestit, Thea Musgrave’s Phoenix Rising, and the “London” Symphony – a sequence that traced the pastoral, martial, and cosmopolitan faces of the national tradition.
Pappano’s relationship with Elgar is equally personal. In June, he conducts the Enigma Variations alongside Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, a pairing that places Elgar’s intimate portraits of friends against Mahler’s vast emotional landscape. “The humanity behind each variation and the characterisations of each friend are so varied and beautifully realised,” Pappano writes. “It’s a heartwarming piece of music, and again, very stirring, very British, but very emotional too.”
An American Accent, a Russian Undercurrent
British music does not exist in isolation on this season’s shelves. Pappano opens his programme with two towering American symphonies: Bernstein’s Third, “Kaddish,” dedicated to the memory of President John F. Kennedy, and Copland’s Third, a work that distils the optimism of post-war America into sprawling, dance-like orchestral writing. Dame Felicity Palmer narrates the Bernstein; Katharina Konradi sings the soprano part. The Copland will be filmed by Marquee TV as part of the documentary series Antonio Pappano: Behind the Symphony.
Later in the season, Bernstein’s Second Symphony, “The Age of Anxiety” – based on W. H. Auden’s poem and scored for orchestra and solo piano – features the Italian pianist Beatrice Rana. “It features a solo piano part, which is incredible because of its jazz nature,” Pappano notes. Meanwhile, the Russian symphonic tradition runs through the season like a shadow: Shostakovich’s Fifth, Ninth, and Tenth symphonies each illuminate a different moment in Soviet cultural politics, while Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Tchaikovsky’s Fourth and Sixth symphonies provide Romantic counterweight.
New Music: Four Premieres, One Mission
The LSO’s commitment to the living is not merely rhetorical. The 2025/26 season features four world premieres, one European premiere, and two UK premieres. Laura Bowler has written a new song cycle for Barbara Hannigan, given its UK premiere in March under the baton of Bar Avni, who makes her LSO debut with that programme. Colin Matthews’ 80th birthday is celebrated with a new Oboe Concerto for LSO Principal Olivier Stankiewicz. Donghoon Shin’s Piano Concerto, composed for Seong-Jin Cho, receives its world premiere in November’s LSO Futures concert, alongside works by Helen Hamlyn Panufnik Scheme composers Omri Kochavi and Sasha Scott. And Soweto Kinch, the saxophonist, rapper, and composer, joins the LSO for Soundtrack to the Apocalypse, the final instalment of a trilogy that began in 2019.
These premieres are not token gestures. They form a deliberate counterpoint to the Beethoven, Mahler, and Wagner that anchor the season, ensuring that the orchestra’s engagement with its own present is as rigorous as its reverence for the past.
Pappano’s Second Act – and What It Reveals
The significance of this season extends beyond any single programme. Pappano’s appointment in 2024 marked the first time the LSO had brought a primarily operatic conductor to the helm since the departure of Colin Davis. His predecessor as conductor emeritus, Sir Simon Rattle, brought a reputation for radical experimentation; Pappano’s hallmark is different – a dramaturgical intensity rooted in the theatre. “There’s always a dramaturgical side to what I do,” he told Gramophone. “And, of course, if I’m doing Symphonie fantastique, Ein Heldenleben and Till Eulenspiegel in the same week, it’s all theatre!”
That sensibility is now reshaping the LSO’s public identity. The “Half Six Fix” pre-concert talks, in which Pappano guides audiences through the evening’s music, reflect a belief that symphonic performance is not a private act between conductor and score but a shared experience that demands context and explanation. The season’s opening concert – Bernstein and Copland – was designed not merely as a musical statement but as a statement about who the LSO is in 2025 and what it stands for.
The Orchestra as Living Institution
Founded in 1904 by fifty musicians who rebelled against Sir Henry Wood’s edict banning deputies, the LSO has always understood itself as an ensemble of individuals rather than a body subsumed under a single will. That cooperative ethos – the players as shareholders, the conductors as guests – has been its defining characteristic for more than a century. Under Pappano, that principle is being extended into new territory. The orchestra’s educational programme, LSO Discovery, continues to nurture the next generation; its own label, LSO Live, preserves and disseminates its work; and its residency at the Barbican, now in its fourth decade, remains the gravitational centre of London’s orchestral life.
With Tristan and Isolde sold out and the season’s programming drawing critical notice, Pappano’s second year is no longer a probation. It is a declaration. The LSO under his baton is not merely preserving a tradition; it is reimagining what a great orchestra can be – one that sings, that argues, that tells stories, and that refuses to draw lines between the concert hall and the opera house. In a cultural landscape increasingly dominated by spectacle and spectacle alone, that is a radical proposition. It is also, one suspects, exactly what those four brass players on a train to Manchester imagined in 1904.
