The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra announced their 2018-2019 season today with ESO’s mercurial young chief conductor Alexander Prior. “The upcoming season has the look and feel of Prior’s personal connection to music. You feel his passion, and how he wants you to discover music in ways you didn’t know were possible”, says Edmonton Symphony Orchestra CEO, Annemarie Petrov.

As always, the season opens with Symphony under the Sky in Hawrelak Park from Aug. 30 through Sept 2, 2018, with Prior conducting the two classical concerts, the first including Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8 and Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2 (with Russian Ilya Yakushev), and the final concert featuring works by Bernstein and Puccini.

The symphonies in the new season are perhaps a little safer that those in the past couple of years, but includes Prior conducting Bruckner’s famous Symphony No. 9 on Sept. 28 & 29, with the recently restored final movement. If you haven’t heard this completion, it’s a must — it completely changes the whole symphony, and what we thought we knew about Bruckner’s final thoughts on life and death.

Conductor Jayce Ogren returns for Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 (Oct. 28), and then Vaughan Williams’ haunting Pastoral Symphony (Nov. 3). Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 will be conducted by Prior on Oct. 4, and Schubert’s Symphony No. 3 on Jan. 24 and 26. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 — one of the lesser known works of his cycle — will be conducted by Rune Bergmann on March 21 and 23, and Prior conducts his ever-popular sixth (The Pastoral) on March 31.

The concertos, too, are largely drawn from the well-known repertoire. Leduc-born James Campbell is the soloist in the ever-popular Mozart Clarinet Concerto (Sept, 28 and 29). Joyce Yang, nominated recently for a Grammy, is the soloist in Beethoven’s first piano concerto (Nov. 3), and the popular Canadian Karen Gomyo plays Brahms’ Violin Concerto on Nov. 16 and 17.

Shostakovich’s ebullient youthful Piano Concerto No. 1 (for piano, trumpet, and strings) will be given by Juno-nominated Stewart Goodyear with the ESO’s Robin Doyon on trumpet, in an interesting concert that includes works by Ravel, Stravinsky, and CMC Associate Composer Jacques Hétu (Jan. 11 and 12).

The ESO’s concertmaster Robert Uchida plays one of the most moving of violin concertos, Elgar’s, on Jan. 26. Tony Yang (CBC Music’s Classical Young Artist of 2016) plays Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 on Feb. 10 in a program that includes a second performance of McPherson’s Concerto for Two Horns Mountain Triptych, premièred earlier this year.

The Polish composer Szymanowski’s Second Violin Concerto, with its rather mystical romanticism and its folk-dance feel, is definitely worth encountering with celebrated British violinist Tasmin Little (March 23). Uchida plays Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, and child prodigy Kevin Chen Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1, on May 5.

The whole season ends with a blockbuster of a concert conducted by Prior on June 14 and 15. Sara Davis Buechner will play Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, alongside music from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and a tuneful John Adams orchestral showcase, Naïve and sentimental music.

Prior is also a prolific composer and arranger as well as conductor, and the season includes the world premières of two works. The first is his orchestration of Schubert’s much-loved extended song-cycle, Die Winterreise, with the baritone Samuel Hasselhorn (March 29 and 31). The second is a brand-new violin concerto, written for Simone Porter, who so impressed in her 2017 Winspear debut (May 31 and June 1).

Some Canadian Music highlights include: