Arts 2026-2027
Another September, another classical music season is upon us. Let’s begin.
HOUSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
HSO begins the 2026-2027 season celebrating the 250th year of the United States. The evening opens with a Fanfare by John Williams, Broadway tunes such as “I Could Have Danced All Night,” music by George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, and Stephen Sondheim. The highlight of the night should be the “Lincoln Portrait” by Aaron Copland, narrated by Texan Matthew McConaughey!
The season opens its subscription series on 2 October with the first of two weekends of their Rachmaninoff Festival. One of my personal favorites, “The Isle of the Dead,” inspired by the haunting painting by Arnold Böcklin, opens the night, followed by “Spring” and the composer’s 2nd Symphony. Music Director Juraj Valčuha conducts performances on 2, 3, and 4 October.
The second part of the Festival features Piano Concerto No. 3 and the 3rd Symphony. Yefim Bronfman performs the concerto. Again, Valčuha conducts on 9, 10, and 11 October.
Conductor David Robertson conducts Mozart’s final symphony, 41, aka Jupiter on 16, 17 and 18 October.
Then it is time for the Shostakovich 9th Symphony. Emmanuel Tjeknavorian conducts along with pieces by Khatchatarian, the Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2 with HSO’s Concertmaster, Yoonshin Song and Borodin. 6, 7, and 8 November. It is an interesting and important sidelight that Stalin, at the end of World War II, expected Shostakovich to compose a Ninth Symphony in a heroic style such as Beethoven’s 9th. Of course, Shostakovich wrote his 9th in a playful style, once again putting him in the dreaded Stalin doghouse. It took Stalin’s death on 5 March, 1953, for Shostakovich to complete and premier his 10th Symphony.
More Russian music follows on 27, 28 and 29 November with Prokovies’s Symphony No. 7 and the Scheherazade by Maurice Ravel, not the piece by Rimsky-Korsakov. Also on the program are selections from the Hitchcock masterpiece, “Vertigo” by Bernard Herrmann. Conducted by Valčuha.
The 2026 part of the season concludes in early December with Gil Shazam , HSO’s Artist-in-Residence this season, performing the Violin Concerto by Samuel Barber. Also on the program is a work by Zoltan Koldây, Dances of Galânta, and the popular 8th Symphony of Dvořák. Valčuha conducts.
HOUSTON GRAND OPERA
A popular work by Carlisle Floyd, Susannah, opens the season in October. Floyd, who offen collaborated with HGO, composed this work in 1955. It tells the story of Susannah Polk, an innocent young woman in a rural Tennessee community who is falsely accused of sexual immorality after church elders see her bathing in a creek. The Reverend Olin Blitch becomes involved, but he assaults Susannah and later seeks her forgiveness; her brother Sam kills Blitch. Finally, the townspeople come to drive Susannah from the valley, but she confronts them with a shotgun, leaving her isolated but defiant.
Soprano Angel Blue stars as Susannah and HGO Music Director James Gaffigan conducts.
From 23 October thru 8 November, 5 performances.
Another favorite of many is Faust, by Charles Gounod. We all should know the story by now – Gounod’s Faust follows the aging scholar Faust, who makes a pact with the devil, Méphistophélès, exchanging his soul for renewed youth and earthly pleasure. Faust falls in love with the innocent Marguerite, whose life is destroyed by their relationship, culminating in the death of her mother, brother, and child and her imprisonment for murder. When Méphistophélès comes to claim her soul, Marguerite rejects him and seeks forgiveness from God, and she is redeemed while Faust is condemned to continue under the devil’s influence.
Tenor Matthew Polenzani stars in the title role, and soprano Pretty Yende sings Marguerite. Giacomo Sagripanti conducts. Five performances, from 30 October through 15 November.
HOUSTON BALLET
The Nutcracker, 27 November through 28 December. Does anything else about this annual holiday marathon really need to be discussed?
The season opens with a three-part program – Symphonie Concertante (Mozart), Meadow (Schubert and others) and Pecos Bill (Pierce). Performances run from 11-20 September.
Manon (Massenet) with performances from 24 September to 4 October.
The 2027 portions of HSO, HGO and Houston Ballet will be presented in a subsequent Intown issue.
That’s it for the rest of the year 2026. Let me continue to hear from you at classicalmusicberquist@gmail.com
