Daniel Raiskin has one word to describe the upcoming season from the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra: spectacular.
“I think that every concert is going to be a highlight of its own,” he says.
The season, which was officially unveiled on Thursday morning, features a rebrand of symphony programming that regular concertgoers will be able to enjoy. The previous Thursday Classics series becomes the BMO Masterworks series (the bank had previously supported the orchestra’s movie series), while the Saturday and Sunday Classics will now be known as Symphonic Sessions.
“It offers a very streamlined opportunity to our patrons to decide whether they want to go out for Saturday night or a Sunday afternoon concert,” explains the symphony’s music director and conductor. “For the orchestra, it’s always wonderful to be able to relive the same energy of the same music again over the course of two concerts, creating maybe a different take on the same pieces on Sunday.”
Both the BMO Masterworks and the Symphonic Sessions series will contain five concerts each, along with the orchestra’s specials, movie offerings, and Pops concerts. Raiskin adds that the orchestra themselves have plenty of input into what goes into their season.
“[The programs] come together out of the process of exchanging the ideas,” he explains. “We have the programming committee with the musicians of the orchestra, we organize the pool of asking questions – ‘What is it you want to play?’ – and then, all kinds of suggestions come in.”
BMO Masterworks
The WSO’s 2026-2027 season begins on September 26 with two familiar symphonies joining forces with a new voice in the organization’s ranks. The fifth symphonies of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky will be paired with “Dark Nights, Brights Stars, Vast Universe” by the orchestra’s new composer-in-residence, Kelly-Marie Murphy, who will also be the new curator of the Winnipeg New Music Festival.
“I can tell you that she’s bursting with ideas and great music and great energy and a wonderful look at ways we present new music,” Raiskin shares. “I think that it’s both logical but also exciting that we can introduce her – though she is absolutely not an unknown entity to the Winnipeg audience – also at our main series during the first concert that features two absolutely outstanding masterworks – both symphonies of fate.”
Raiskin’s influence over the programming of the WSO’s upcoming season also comes from his other engagements all over the world. The conductor recently took over as the music and artistic director of the Janáček Philharmonic in Ostrava, Czech Republic, and having been steeped in the repertoire of the composer for which the orchestra is named, he will bring that music to Winnipeg in the form of his Sinfonietta. The Royal Canadian Air Force Band will be joining the WSO on this concert to help bring Janáček’s music to life along with two works by Bedrich Smetana and Dvorak’s Cello Concerto in B minor, which will feature French cellist Edgar Moreau as soloist.
“[The Sinfonietta] is one of these remarkable pieces that requires almost ten trumpets to be on stage, and we don’t have so many in this symphony,” explains Raiskin of the RCAF Band’s involvement, “and instead of trying to hand-pick from freelance, we decided, ‘Why don’t we go to a collaboration with a well-established and well-sounding military band here in town where some of our former musicians now play?’”
Another local collaboration shines in the third BMO Masterworks offering from the WSO – one that Raiskin only had to look to his left to find. Fresh off his first year as the WSO’s concertmaster, Karl Stobbe will perform Beethoven’s violin concerto as the soloist, an idea that occurred to Raiskin during Stobbe’s blind audition.
“During this audition, he played Beethoven that absolutely – you know, my jaw dropped,” says Raiskin. “I said, ‘What if there’s an opportunity for us to do it – the real thing – with real orchestra in front of the audience that all love and respect him? It would be a gift.’”
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Two pianists will be the soloists for the final two concerts of the BMO Masterworks series. Fresh off releasing her latest album Invitation a la Valse, pianist Janina Fialkowska joins the symphony alongside guest conductor Otto Tausk (music director of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra) to perform Mozart’s 27th piano concerto in a program that also features Anton Bruckner’s “Romantic” Symphony no. 4 and “Strange Loop” by the late Manitoban-born composer Jocelyn Morlock. Following that, Anna Genuishene will return to Winnipeg to perform the first piano concerto of Johannes Brahms – a work that she was supposed to perform two seasons ago before an injury forced her to withdraw.
“We are not going to escape the fate trying to fool it,” says Raiskin with a wry smile. “We love the piece. She loves the piece. Let’s bring it together.”
Genuieshene’s performance will be paired with Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition orchestrated by Maurice Ravel which will close out the series on May 8 and 9.
Source: Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.
Symphonic Sessions
The warmth of summer will shine through the first Symphonic Sessions concert of the autumn as the first two concerts skew more towards the influence of vocal music. Local favourite Andriana Chuchman will join the orchestra to perform Hector Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été in a program led by German-Iranian conductor Hossein Pishkar that also includes Schubert’s “Tragic” Symphony no. 4.
“[Pishkar] has been one of my assitants and apprentices during my time in Germany,” says Raiskin,” and he has grown into a very respected and fully mature conductor himself, working with some of the finest orchestras around the world and in Europe. It just fills my heart with joy to see that my former students, assistants and apprentices making it so well in this demanding and competitive circuit.”
Another emerging conductor on the world stage, Chloe Rooke, will join the WSO in November for an all-English program that features Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations along with two pieces inspired by Benjamin Britten’s most enduring opera, Peter Grimes. “She has a great energy of uniting people around [herself] as a kind of community builder,” Raiskin says, “so, I think that connecting it to her English heritage and DNA is the right thing to do.”
The third and final guest conductor in the Symphonic Sessions is Ryusuke Numajiri. Joined by the fast-rising Canadian pianist Elisabeth Pion, he will lead the WSO in Robert Schumann’s “Rhenish” Symphony no. 3, Dai Fujikura’s “Banitza Groove”, and Franz Liszt’s second piano concerto.
Raiskin notes that even though this will be Numajiri’s first time in Winnipeg, he will already have a sense of the orchestra’s calibre and capability. “It’s interesting that the orchestra he’s music director of currently [the Nagoya Philharmonic] , their artist in residence, their principal guest conductor is one of my predecessors here… Maestro [Kazuhiro] Koizumi.”
“It’s these unusual parallels in the world that seems to be so disconnected, but also so connected at the same time.”
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Raiskin himself will return to the Symphonic Sessions podium on April 1, 2027 for a program starring violinist Sueye Park sharing Mendelssohn’s violin concerto as well as Igor Stravinsky’s Petrushka. “Petrushka, in Russian folklore, is that kind of fair and market fool who runs around and doodles around and does all kinds of naughty jokes and things,” he explains. “He’s very joyful, but also, at the same time, there’s tragic undertones as always in life where it’s light and darkness and sadness and joyfulness around. I thought that it would be a fitting work for this concert.”
The Symphonic Sessions will close the WSO’s 2026-2027 season on May 13 with horn soloist Radek Baborak joining the orchestra for Reinhold Gliere’s horn concerto paired with pieces that are still being chosen by members of the orchestra.
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The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra will once again share the Centennial Concert Hall stage in From the Inside Out. (Photo: Nolan Kehler/PNN)
Movies, Pops and community collaborations
Alongside the two newly-branded signature series being shared by the orchestra, audiences will be able to enjoy many other offerings geared towards a wide range of music lovers. The movie scores series (now sponsored by Leon and Cecilia Asper) will offer five productions including Skyfall and Barbie, while the Pops series will share music of Billy Joel, Elton John and Pink Floyd. The orchestra will also work with local performing arts groups including Rainbow Stage while also inviting former RBC Assistant Conductor Naomi Woo to return to the WSO’s ranks to lead the third annual From the Inside Out performances, which invite audience members onto the stage to sit amongst the orchestra.
For more information on the WSO’s upcoming season and to purchase ticket packages, patrons are encouraged to visit the orchestra’s website.