Symphony of youth

Last week, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (HK Phil) announced some of its bravest and boldest programming yet, unveiling a season that appears to court a younger audience while offering a robust roster of canonical composers and blockbuster heavyweight soloists.

The city's flagship classical music orchestra kicks off its 2025-26 season on Sept 12 with the first of its 26 main-stage productions that range from high German romanticism and Nordic myth to video game music and Disney soundtracks.

Chinese pianist Lang Lang, American soprano Rene Fleming, and German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter are among the classical music superstars jetting in to perform. But the orchestra's 52nd season also makes space for several premieres of works by composers from Hong Kong and challenging contemporary works — which suggests an intent to lead rather than follow trends.

Meet the new boss

"Find out" is the short, sharp season theme. HK Phil Chief Executive Benedikt Fohr says that those words are a response to a question that has been making the rounds lately: Who is Tarmo Peltokoski, anyway? While his four-year contract as music director officially begins in 2026, the Gen-Z wunderkind's presence is already being loudly felt.

Next month, in a late addition to the current 2024-25 season, the 25-year-old Finn will conduct an hourlong instrumental Richard Wagner suite, arranged by Dutch composer Henk de Vlieger, to be recorded by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) — marking HK Phil's first release with the preeminent classical label.

This program sounds an odd chord, falling in the shadow of Jaap van Zweden's 12-year tenure leading the orchestra, during which the Dutch maestro had conducted the entire Ring Cycle by Wagner for a live recording released by the Naxos label. The event earned HK Phil the Orchestra of the Year title at the Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2019. However, Peltokoski is expected to make his voice heard quickly, bringing a distinctly Nordic touch to the 2025-26 season by conducting works by Finland's Sibelius and Norway's Grieg.

HK Phil's director of artistic planning, Timothy Tsukamoto, hails Peltokoski's leadership as the beginning of a "new era". "Jaap built HK Phil into a really solid orchestra, and Tarmo will definitely build on that foundation and take it to the next level," he says.

Peltokoski was hired back in September 2024, less than a year after the fast-rising star was signed exclusively with DG. "I think we are very fortunate to have gotten him," says Tsukamoto. "If we had waited even a few more months, it would have been too late."

Isaac Droscha, an opera singer and a senior lecturer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology's Division of Humanities, welcomes the youthful perspective added to a podium that typically rewards seasoned ex-performers. "The longer you are in this business, the more firm and concrete your perspective becomes," he says. "But when you have a young guy who's in his mid-20s, his ideas are still evolving. So he's bringing that youthful vigor to the music — and that's always interesting."

Nordic charm

Peltokoski's greatest coup so far is enticing compatriot and mentor Esa-Pekka Salonen into serving as the season's composer-in-residence. Salonen is only the third person in HK Phil's history in this role, and the first since 2000.

Salonen's renown as a conductor is undisputed, thanks to his era-defining 17 years leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Now Hong Kong audiences have an opportunity to discover Salonen the composer, and hear five of his works performed across the season.

"Of course he is a maestro conductor, but I greatly admire his compositions. He's reviving and reinvigorating the musical landscape instead of trying to replace it with something completely new," says composer Daniel Lo Ting-cheung, adding that it is a rare privilege to get to listen to live performances of works by a living legend.

The lineup includes what Peltokoski calls a "rock 'n' roll violin concerto" — performed by celebrated soloist Leila Josefowicz, for whom Salonen composed the piece. Conducted by Peltokoski, the concert is due on April 24, 2026. On May 1-2, Salonen will take the baton himself for the Asia premiere of his new Horn Concerto, co-commissioned by HK Phil.

Pop culture concessions

Though he was missed at last week's official season launch, Peltokoski made his presence felt with a series of pithy video clips that appear tailor-made for social media. In one of them, he controversially describes Shostakovich's Symphony No 11 as a "film score without a film deafening and terrifying - and I love it". In another one, he boldly declares Vaughan Williams' A Sea Symphony, which he will conduct at the season close, on July 3-4, 2026, as the "best first symphony written by anyone". One imagines these clips going viral among the younger classical-music fans.

"To put it quite bluntly, if you want to attract a youthful audience, it doesn't hurt to have someone represent that on the podium," Droscha says.

Efforts to widen the audience base are evident in the season's first performance on Sept 12-13 — a movie-music program marking 10 years since the death of James Horner, the celebrated Hollywood composer who scored blockbusters that included Avatar, Aliens, Braveheart and Titanic. HK Phil will also tune into a younger crowd with Frozen Live in Concert, just in time for the holidays, on Dec 18-20, and present Heroes: A Video Game Symphony on Oct 31 and Nov 1.

Lo praises the season's eclectic balance, drawing attention to the presentation of lesser-known classical works alongside these nods to popular culture, noting that Hong Kong's concert-hall audience is "quite young compared with that of the US or Europe".

Droscha lauds HK Phil's "pretty astounding" ability to "walk the tightrope" between the so-called highbrow- and lowbrow-culture source material. "I'm guessing that Fohr may not be a great video game player," he says. "But I think what he and Tsukamoto recognize is that this is somebody's pop culture reference and so by programming it, they're going to bring some fresh ears into the auditorium — they will come for Final Fantasy and Frozen, and stay for Csar Franck."

Homegrown voices

In years past, a typical HK Phil season might have featured a short token piece by a Hong Kong composer. Marking out the promised "new era", the 2025-26 program shines the spotlight on no less than four local composers — led by Elliot Leung's 30-minute epic Wuxia, inspired by the novels of late literary giant Louis Cha Leung-yung, better known as Jin Yong, to be performed at the National Day Concert on Sept 26.

The season's two HK Phil-commissioned world premieres will see long-time Hong Kong Sinfonietta associate Charles Kwong present his first piece, Festina lente, for HK Phil, on Oct 9; while Hong Kong-raised British composer Dani Howard's Cello Concerto will premiere on May 15-16, 2026.

In another huge coup, composer Lo's Asterismal Dance was handpicked by van Zweden — who returns as guest conductor to lead HK Phil's summer tour of Europe. The itinerary includes Amsterdam's Het Concertgebouw, the Merano Festival in Italy, and the Grafenegg Festival in Austria.

Lo says he could "never have dreamed or imagined" his work playing in Amsterdam's iconic venue — especially as it was already performed multiple times by the orchestra in Europe and Singapore last year. "It's not very common for HK Phil to perform a new piece more than once," he adds. "This is a very precious opportunity."

Moreover, getting to travel with the orchestra allows Lo to spend more time with the musicians, "so when I write the next piece, I know how to make it even better for them".