Sydney Symphony Orchestra

Music is all about connection – and it is the connection between the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the audience that makes a performance unforgettable.

In 2025, feel the connection with the world’s leading artists, including pianists Lang Lang and Daniil Trifonov and Chief Conductor Simone Young. It’s a season full of timeless favourites and tomorrow’s classics from the grand and exhilarating to the tender and intimate, including Beethoven Ninth Symphony and Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony.

All brought to life by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall.

Music is all about connection.

Individual notes connecting to form a mighty symphony. Musicians connecting to conjure entire universes of emotion. But it is the connection with and amongst the audience that makes a performance unforgettable. Sitting in the dark, immersed in

this remarkable music, we all experience something unique – and yet are connected in the profound experience of live music.

In 2025, we invite you to delve deeper into this extraordinary music as we re-connect with great works and great artists and make new connections with rising stars and less familiar masterpieces. Opening with Mahler’s Third Symphony and concluding with Beethoven’s Ninth, together we will rediscover great masterpieces and be reminded of their timelessness.

We will explore lesser-known works by great composers, including Elgar, Richard Strauss and Vaughan Williams, and encounter new aspects of their artistry. And we will experience exciting new works by brilliant contemporary voices, and hear some of what our world sounds like today. All this brought to life by our superb Orchestra in world-class concert halls.

Superstar pianist Lang Lang returns to Sydney for two very special concerts. We spend one big week with pianist Daniil Trifonov, including a Rachmaninov concerto and two recitals of Schubert songs with baritone Matthias Goerne. And we look forward to two weeks with Sir Stephen Hough, performing concertos by Felix Mendelssohn and Brahms.

We welcome back our Principal Guest Conductor Sir Donald Runnicles, and we reunite with pianists Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Javier Perianes; violinists James Ehnes and Arabella Steinbacher; and cellist Daniel Müller-Schott, who bring their superb talents back to Sydney.

We forge new connections with artists making their Sydney Symphony debuts, from established stars such as Marc-André Hamelin, Edward Gardner, Sasha Cooke, Lise de la Salle and Akiko Suwanai to the new generation of talent including Kian Soltani, Daniel Lozakovich, Eva Gevorgyan, Finnegan Downie Dear and Roderick Cox.

And our multi-year Ring Cycle in concert continues with Siegfried. I am thrilled to bring a world-class cast of singers to realise the musical and dramatic centrepiece of Wagner’s epic work.

2025 promises to be a year of extraordinary excitement and richness. I hope you will join us.

Simone Young AM
Chief Conductor