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Classical California and the LA Phil!
LA Phil
Join Classical California at the Walt Disney Concert Hall this Season!
For over a century, the LA Phil has been as vibrant as Los Angeles, one of the world's most open and dynamic cities. Under the leadership of Music & Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel, it presents nearly 300 events per year, harnessing the transformative power of live music to build community, foster intellectual and artistic growth, and nurture the creative spirit, while redefining what an orchestra can be.
Join Classical California and the LA Phil this season for TEN (10) great musical performances at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, one of the most acoustically sophisticated concert halls in the world!
LA Phil
Mehta Leads Bruckner’s Eighth The LA Phil’s Conductor Emeritus navigates the monumental cathedral of sound.
Concert Dates: Fri Nov 7, 2025 8:00PM Sat Nov 8, 2025 2:00PM Sun Nov 9, 2025 2:00PM
Artists: Los Angeles Philharmonic Zubin Mehta, conductor
About this Performance:
What to expect: When Zubin Mehta first heard the Adagio movement of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony, he said he “instinctively broke into tears” because of its beauty and intensity. It’s bombastic, soaring, and lyrical in a way that “will break your heart,” he says.
What’s special about this: Mehta is passionate about Bruckner, having studied and championed his music over the last seven decades. This will be a rare opportunity to hear the Eighth conducted by an expert.
What to listen for: The Wagner tubas! Bruckner’s Eighth calls for four of these special instruments that sound like a cross between a French horn and tuba. Hear them shine in the Scherzo.
What the critics say: Bachtrack wrote that the pairing of Mehta and Bruckner feels like “the most natural thing in the world.”
LA Phil
Elgar’s Enigma Unlock a world of musical puzzles and revelations during an evening of British and Austrian masterworks.
Concert Dates: Fri Nov 21, 2025 8:00PM Sat Nov 22, 2025 8:00PM Sun Nov 23, 2025 2:00PM
Artists: Los Angeles Philharmonic Roberto González-Monjas, conductor Sheku Kanneh-Mason, cello
About this Performance: Elgar’s Enigma Variations contain one of the most fascinating mysteries in British classical music. Consisting of a theme and 14 variations—some dark and searching, others playful and assertive—the orchestral work builds upon a wistful theme that was written as a countermelody to an unknown piece that Elgar never shared. A century later, no one has cracked the code to the secret tune. Roberto González-Monjas opens the program with another set of variations, this time by Korngold, overflowing with golden harmonies and a folkish warmth.
Sheku Kanneh-Mason, “a cellist so talented it is simply outrageous” (The Courier and Evening Telegraph), reunites with the LA Phil for the world premiere of an Edmund Finnis concerto. After working together on Kanneh-Mason’s 2022 album Song, the cellist described the British composer’s work as “distinctive in character and perfectly written for the cello.”
Mozart & Sibelius A match of Mozartian elegance with brooding Nordic drama.
Concert Dates: Fri Dec 12, 2025 8:00PM Sat Dec 13, 2025 8:00PM Sun Dec 14, 2025 2:00PM
Artists: Los Angeles Philharmonic Gustavo Gimeno, conductor Renaud Capuçon, violin
About this Performance: A violinist of “velvety tone and...a high degree of elegance” (Los Angeles Times), Renaud Capuçon brings these ideal qualities to Mozart’s sublime Third Violin Concerto. Albert Einstein claimed that its Adagio “seems to have fallen straight from heaven,” before culminating in a lively Alsatian dance.
Finland's greatest symphonist, Jean Sibelius modeled his first contribution to the genre on Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” Symphony, layering it with his trademark soaring themes and thrilling drama. The work quickly became a point of national pride, performed by the Helsinki Orchestra across Europe on its first tour.
LA Phil
Prometheus Salonen joins forces with a favorite collaborator and leads Scriabin’s Poem of Fire LA Phil.
Concert Dates: Fri Jan 9, 2026 8:00PM Sat Jan 10, 2026 8:00PM Sun Jan 11, 2026 2:00PM
Artists: Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor Pekka Kuusisto, violin Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano Liv Redpath, soprano Jingjing Xu, mezzo-soprano Los Angeles Master Chorale Grant Gershon, Artistic Director Jenny Wong, Associate Artistic Directo
About this Performance: Scriabin’s vision for Prometheus lays out the mythic tale of humanity receiving the gift of fire not just through mystical music but through an all-consuming work of art that draws on the audience’s senses. The Russian composer, who described himself as synesthetic, envisioned a color organ for the piece that would project various hues of light that he associated with each musical tone or chord.
In the first half, the LA Phil’s Conductor Laureate reunites with one of his favorite collaborators, violinist Pekka Kuusisto, for the world premiere performance of a new concerto by another of Salonen’s regular collaborators: composer Gabriella Smith. Afterward, he guides Debussy’s radiant, Impressionistic cantata, La damoiselle élue, with soprano Liv Redpath, mezzo-soprano Jingjing Xu, and the voices of the Los Angeles Master Chorale.
LA Phil
Mahler, Bartók & Ravel
Concert Dates: Thu Jan 29, 2026 8:00PM Fri Jan 30, 2026 11:00am Sat Jan 31, 2026 8:00PM Sun Feb 1, 2026 2:00PM
Artists: Los Angeles Philharmonic Elim Chan, conductor Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, soprano
About this Performance: Sleigh bells and sweet melodies tumble out from Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, painting a scene the composer compared to “a dewdrop on a flower that suddenly illuminated by the sun, bursts into a thousand lights and colors.” Former Dudamel Fellow Elim Chan leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic as they traverse a shifting atmosphere of mellow woodwinds, menacing trumpet calls, and eager timpani wallops, before approaching the gates of heaven.
When everything unravels in the final movement, South African soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha voices Mahler’s joyful child, envisioning what lies beyond the pearly gates. With her “sumptuous, plush sound,” Rangwanasha “floats high notes with almost indecent ease. Hear a few of them live and it’s as if you’ve died and (sins allowing) gone straight to Heaven” (The Times of London).
LA Phil
Gustavo Conducts Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
Concert Dates: Fri Feb 20, 2026 8:00PM Sat Feb 21, 2026 8:00PM Sun Feb 22, 2026 2:00PM
Artists: Los Angeles Philharmonic Gustavo Dudamel, conductor Pretty Yende, soprano Sarah Saturnino, mezzo-soprano SeokJong Baek, tenor Nicholas Brownlee, bass Orfeó Català, choir Cor de Cambra del Palau de la Música Catalana, choir Xavier Puig, choir conductor
About this Performance: In his final season as LA Phil Music and Artistic Director, Gustavo Dudamel brings together the massive choral and orchestral forces and even grander musical ideas of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis. “From my heart, may it go to the heart,” Beethoven wrote at the top of his “Solemn Mass,” and privately he told friends he believed it to be his best composition. Yet, the epic, near-90-minute testament of Beethoven’s faith grounded in human and Rationalist spirituality is a rarity in concert halls because of its ambitious scale, leading Beethoven biographer Jan Swafford to call it “one of the greatest pieces never heard.” With a stellar cast of soloists and 120 voices from Barcelona’s Orfeó Català chorus, Dudamel navigates the shifting landscapes of Beethoven’s transcendent and revelatory masterwork.
LA Phil
Brahms & Beethoven Italian pianist Beatrice Rana returns, and Paavo Järvi conducts Brahms’ sunniest symphony.
Concert Dates: Fri Mar 27, 2026 8:00PM Sat Mar 28, 2026 2:00PM Sun Mar 29, 2026 2:00PM
Artists: Los Angeles Philharmonic Paavo Järvi, conductor Beatrice Rana, piano
About this Performance: Paavo Järvi won raves when he led Brahms’ Second Symphony at New York’s Lincoln Center: “When the music built in urgency, Järvi made its outbursts sudden and awesome, with slashing rhythms and harrowingly great contrasts of volume and tempo,” reported The New Yorker. The acclaimed Brahmsian leads the LA Phil in the composer’s sunny, yet seductive, symphony.
Järvi kicks off the concert with Schumann’s Overture, Scherzo and Finale, filled with the “flush of spring” and the promise of new love, and Beethoven’s brilliant Piano Concerto No. 3—in which the composer puts forward a new path for his music—with Italian pianist Beatrice Rana. Third Coast Review compares her sound to velvet, writing that “Her fingering through the runs and the force she applied in the octave passages was like magic.”
LA Phil
Shostakovich & Sibelius Alisa Weilerstein tackles a Shostakovich specialty, and Ryan Bancroft explores Finnish myth.
Concert Dates: Fri Apr 17, 2026 8:00PM Sat Apr 18, 2026 2:00PM Sun Apr 19, 2026 2:00PM
Artists: Los Angeles Philharmonic Ryan Bancroft, conductor Alisa Weilerstein, cello
About this Performance: Shostakovich’s immersive Second Cello Concerto weaves a wide-ranging rhapsody that is brooding and spooky with moments of levity from the least likely of sources: a bagel. Inspiration is nothing if unpredictable, and Shostakovich’s muse was the Ukrainian street vendor’s song “Who will buy my bagel?”, which he transformed into a challenging cello tour de force. On stage and in her celebrated 2016 album featuring the concerto, Alisa Weilerstein has been praised for her deft interpretation of the work, leading The Guardian to write, “Her playing ranged from tranquil passages of sensual beauty to rough, demotic outbursts performed with the furious expression of one who has been rudely awoken from a beautiful dream.”
Sibelius’ inspiration for the Lemminkäinen Suite might skew loftier than boiled bread, but the result is just as enchanting. Subtitled “Four Legends from the Kalevala,” referencing Finland’s national mythological epic poem, the suite loosely follows the adventures of the heroic Lemminkäinen retold in Sibelius’ sonic landscapes. Ryan Bancroft leads the LA Phil through every musical twist and turn, from the majestic and mystical call of a swan to the harrowing land of the dead.
LA Phil
Dvořák & Korngold María Dueñas performs Korngold’s masterful and dramatic Violin Concerto under the spirited baton of Andres Orozco-Estrada.
Concert Dates: Fri May 1, 2026 8:00PM Sat May 2, 2026 8:00PM Sun May 3, 2026 2:00PM
Artists: Los Angeles Philharmonic Andrés Orozco-Estrada, conductor María Dueñas, violin
About this Performance: “With her gorgeous sound—dense, warm, and brilliant—and her immaculate technique, [María] Dueñas is already at the top” (Bachtrack). The Gen-Z violinist makes her highly anticipated return to Walt Disney Concert Hall with Korngold’s mesmerizing and theatrical Violin Concerto.
Like Dueñas, Korngold was one of classical music’s great child prodigies, and he went on to become one of the most influential film composers in Hollywood. In hopes of solidifying his reputation beyond cinema, Korngold zeroed in on composing more concert music, including the Violin Concerto. He might have snatched some melodic ideas from his earlier film scores, but the music stands on its own as a shimmering showpiece for the instrument.
Colombian conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada makes his LA Phil debut, leading the Korngold piece alongside Dvořák’s austere Seventh Symphony, a piece he hoped would “make a stir in the world.” And that, it did—becoming a critically acclaimed work among Romantic symphonies for its rumbling percussion and warm, lyrical spirit.
LA Phil
Rachmaninoff & Szymanowski Conductor Lorenzo Viotti and violinist Lisa Batiashvili join for an impassioned program of late-Romantic gems.
Concert Dates: Fri May 8, 2026 8:00PM Sat May 9, 2026 8:00PM Sun May 10, 2:00PM
Artists: Los Angeles Philharmonic Lorenzo Viotti, conductor Lisa Batiashvili, violin
About this Performance: Swiss conductor Lorenzo Viotti makes his highly anticipated LA Phil debut conducting Rachmaninoff’s masterful Second Symphony. Written during a particularly fruitful period of the composer’s career, the lush and passionate Second bursts with orchestral colors. “[T]here was a real sense of Viotti … getting caught up in the Romantic spirit of the work,” Bachtrack reported following a 2022 performance of the work.
Known for her “pure, gorgeous tone and fabulous technique,” Lisa Batiashvili dives into Szymanowski’s shimmering First Violin Concerto from the same era. “It’s a piece full of love and pain deriving from the restrictions experienced by a man who was in love with another man at a time when this was outlawed both legally and morally,” Batiashvili says. Her performances of the concerto—on stage and in recordings—have won raves around the globe. One such review in the Boston Globe exclaimed: “Batiashvili’s violin made its entrance, sylphlike. …[M]aterializing distinct themes out of the freewheeling, atmospheric euphoria, her phrases were seamless without sentimentality.”
