Noteworthy

By Kyle MacMillan

It’s an old show-business maxim—start big and end big. And that’s exactly what the Toronto Symphony Orchestra is doing in its just-announced 2025/26 season.

The season bursts to life September 18, 20, and 21 with Carl Orff’s explosive Carmina Burana, a choral tour de force that promises to grip audiences from the first thunderous notes of “O Fortuna”. And just as one masterpiece sets the tone, another brings it home—the season concludes June 11–14, 2026, with Ludwig van Beethoven’s monumental Symphony No. 9, the triumphant “Choral”.

Like opera’s La bohème, theatre’s Macbeth, or ballet’s Swan Lake, these two works are symphonic classics—towering cultural landmarks. Though they premièred more than 100 years apart and are quite different in effect, both are big, thrilling works that grab their audience and don’t let go to the very end. They are even least partly familiar to people who don’t normally pay attention to classical music because excerpts of both are regularly heard on movie soundtracks and even in television commercials.

Orff is almost solely remembered for this popular choral extravaganza, a cantata written in 1935–1936 and based on 24 medieval poems concerning the vicissitudes of fortune, the joys of love, and the perils of drinking and other vices. It has become a staple of pop culture, with its pounding rhythms and dramatic choral lines featured in countless movie trailers and TV spots. Carmina Burana offers a diversity of emotions and textures but is best known for the visceral, thundering “O Fortuna”, which opens and closes the work.

Skipping ahead to the current century, Orff’s work will be paired with the Canadian Première of Wynton Marsalis’s Concerto for Orchestra, a TSO Co-commission unveiled on January 31, 2025, in Cologne, Germany. The American trumpeter and composer’s works have gained wide popular appeal with their blurring of jazz and classical music. He’s even been dubbed a “21st-century Leonard Bernstein” by The Harvard Crimson.

Fast forward to June, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony provides the season’s majestic finale. Premièred in 1824 (over 200 years ago!), its groundbreaking fourth movement introduces a full chorus and vocal soloists to deliver the iconic “Ode to Joy”, a hymn to hope and freedom adapted from Friedrich Schiller’s poetry. Even for seasoned listeners, the moment the cellos and basses introduce the “Ode” melody never fails to give goosebumps, setting the stage for an exhilarating crescendo of voices and instruments.

This work, the culmination of the composer’s lifelong devotion to hope and freedom, has often been presented at key historic moments such as conductor Leonard Bernstein’s performance of it in 1989 to mark the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Music Director Gustavo Gimeno will oversee all of these performances, which will involve scores of singers and musicians—both a challenge because of the large forces and an opportunity for cross-city artistic collaboration. The venerable Toronto Mendelssohn Choir will perform in both programs, and the Toronto Children’s Chorus will be featured in Carmina Burana.

Carmina Burana and Beethoven’s “Choral” Symphony explore different sides of what it means to be human and offer contrasting musical styles, but they are both timeless masterpieces that serve as must-see bookends to the TSO’s 2025/26 season. 

Don’t miss the chance to experience these unforgettable performances at Roy Thomson Hall. Subscribe at TSO.CA/Subscribe to secure the best seats.