Hope your week is off to a great start! Our curated news includes some exciting links for a listening adventure!
Barbara Hannigan, conductor
Conductor Barbara Hannigan‘s first season as Chief Conductor & Artistic Director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra has officially begun! (Her tenure officially began in August.) She is taking the position over from conductor Eva Ollikainen, who has held the post since 2020. Notably, the ISO is one of few orchestras to not only have a woman as its primary conductor/music director but to have had two in succession.
Hannigan is a decorated musician—as a conductor, soprano, and recording artist. In addition to working with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, she made conducting debuts in the 2025/26 season with the New York Philharmonic, the Czech Philharmonic, and the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala. She has given world premiere performances of nearly 100 new works, and is an avid collaborator with composers and orchestras. In the 2025/26 season she premiered Laura Bowler’s The White Book (with text by Nobel laureate Han Kang), co-commissioned by London Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony and Copenhagen Philharmonic. She has been the recipient of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards Laureate in 2026, the Polar Music Prize Laureate in 2025, and Musical America Artist of the Year award in 2025.
Louise Farrenc, composer
On September 5, Louise Farrenc‘s Overture No. 2 (1834) opened a BBC Proms program featuring Martha Argerich, accompanied by the Munich Philharmonic directed by Lahav Shani. Argerich is considered by many to be the greatest living pianist. Farrenc’s music gets a noticeable amount of air-time in the orchestral repertoire of music by women; her musical language is firmly rooted in the Romantic symphonic tradition, which makes it popular with audiences as well as with orchestras. We at Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy are proud to publish her Symphonies 1 and 3!
Below is a recording of the Overture No. 2, performed by the Bangor Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lucas Richman. The recording was made live at the Collins Center for the Arts, in Orono, Maine on September 22, 2024.
Sofia Gubaidulina, composer
Sofia Gubaidulina’s Concerto for Viola and Orchestra (1996) is enjoying renewed performances in September. On September 6, it was performed at the Musikfest Berlin Festival by the London Symphony Orchestra, directed by Sir Antonio Pappano. On September 9 and 10, the Finnish Radio Symphony will perform the Finnish premiere of the Viola Concerto in Helskini with Nicholas Collon conducting.
Gubaidulina’s viola concerto is as much a celebration of the viola itself as it is of the abilities and particularly style of the soloist to whom she dedicated it. Violist Yuri Bashmat performed the premiere alongside the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall in Chicago in 1997. The composer writes that “In order to allow the solo viola to submerge itself, from time to time, in the shadow of this second [contrasting sound] dimension . . . I chose very simple intervallic relationships: the minor second in one of these dimensions widens into a major second widens into a minor third; the minor third — into a major third; the tritone — into a perfect fifth. This combining of intervallic pairs brings the musical fabric of the orchestra into a vibrating state, sometimes a glimmering and sometimes a fiery state. And as a consequence of this vibration a specific rhythmic figure emerges which then repeats itself several times and delineated the sections of the [seven sections of the] form.” (From the composer’s own notes.)
Gabriela Ortiz, composer, with GRAMMY Award
On September 8, the Los Angeles Philharmonic will perform Gabriela Ortiz’s Kauyumari on a program of US and Mexican composers, directed by Carlos Miguel Prieto. The LA Phil is the original commissioning orchestra for this work, and played the world premiere at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles in 2021 under the direction of Gustavo Dudamel. They commissioned the work to celebrate returning to the stage after COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020.
Ortiz uses the symbolism of the kauyumari, or blue deer, in her piece because in the cosmology of the Huichol people of Mexico it represents a spiritual guide. A guide is typically consulted on an extended pilgrimage or vision quest with the ritual consumption of hallucinogenic cactus (peyote). On such a journey pilgrims might consult their ancestors, receive spiritual healing, or enhance their roles as guardians of the planet. Every year a ritual hunt of the blue deer is performed in gratitude for granting them access to the spiritual world. (Her full composer note may be consulted on the Boosey & Hawkes website.) Ortiz’s chosen theme simultaneously honors those who died during the pandemic, and celebrates the return of live music.
Jennifer Higdon, composer
On September 10th and 12th, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra will open its 2026/27 season with a concert including Jennifer Higdon’s Blue Cathedral (2000), conducted by Ryan Bancroft.
Higdon’s orchestra concerto is her most frequently programmed work. It began as a commission to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Curtis Institute of Music, but the final work that emerged was much more personal. Her younger brother, Andrew Blue Higdon, had recently died from skin cancer, and his death colored the entire work. The composer wrote that “It was about deciding if life was going to be about living or about death.” It became a sonic journey through the sacred space of the cathedral and upward into the heavens. In her own notes to the piece, Higdon writes that cathedrals “are a symbolic doorway into and out of this world” and that “blue represents all potential and the progression of journeys.” I don’t think it’s an accident that both her blue cathedral and Ortiz’s Kauyumari have some overlapping symbolism in these areas.
On Sept. 9th and 10th, the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra (Sweden) led by Sofi Jeannin, performs Valborg Aulin’s Tableaux Parisiens. She composed it while studying in Paris in 1886, but the work never received a performance in her lifetime. The four-movement suite was first recorded a few years ago by Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, on an album that received the Swedish “Grammi” award. Take a listen to this excting work!
Cecilia McDowall, composer
Finally, on September 10th the English Chamber Orchestra will present a concert in Trinity College Chapel including Amy Beach’s Romance for Violin and Piano, Op. 23 and the premiere of Cecilia McDowall’s Love Through the Seasons. McDowall’s new work is an English Chamber Orchestra commission. The candlelit concert celebrates the work of British violin soloist Harriet Mackenzie.
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