Alain Altinoglu starts the new season in a rather unusual way with the popular Spotlight concert: he highlights and presents Camille Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals together with pianists Lucas & Arthur Jussen. As the year 2025 marks the 150th annivesary of Maurice Ravel's birth, the Music Director will open the Große Reihe at the Alte Oper Frankfurt with his Ma mère l'oye and L' enfant et les sortileges. Altinoglu will conduct a total of nine programs, enriched by soloists such as Renaud Capuçon, Vilde Frang and Alisa Weilerstein.

A special highlight will be the collaboration with violinist Sergey Khachatryan, in which both will draw on their Armenian roots and together present works by composers such as Aram Khachaturian and Komitas Vardapet. Chamber music from Armenia will also find its way to the Alte Oper and the hr-Sendesaal, when the siblings Sergey and Lusine Khachatryan will perform together and Alain Altinoglu at the piano.

Altinoglu also continues the Shostakovich cycle with the 11th Symphony, continues the orchestra's Mahler tradition with the 9th Symphony and concludes the season with the 4th Symphony by Brahms.

Outlook for the Frankfurt Radio Symphony’s 2025/26 season

For the eighth time, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and the European Central Bank, supported by Elisabethen Quelle, invite to the Europa Open Air on the banks of the Main in Frankfurt. The program on August 21st offers a wide-ranging selection of works, from Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's A Midsummer Night's Dream to Gustav Holst's The Planets. The two »Artists in Residence«, Lucas & Arthur Jussen, offer a special highlight with Francis Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos.

In the 2025/26 season, audiences can also once again experience the quality of the orchestra’s musicians in Quick & Classy. The short concert will focus on musicians from the ranks of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony: solo double bassist Bogusław Furtok, solo clarinettist Tomaž Močilnik and horn player Kristian Katzenberger. hr3 Morningshow presenter Tobi Kämmerer will once again lead the audience through the popular Christmas concert Christmas all over the World in his usual relaxed manner.

The unconventional Kammerflimmern lives from its immediacy in original Frankfurt concert venues. It has found its loyal audience in the main station’s neighbourhood at the Latin Palace Changó but will also be a guest again at the International Theater in Frankfurt’s Ostend and for the first time at the Orangerie in Günthersburgpark in Frankfurt’s Nordend. In addition, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony is once again offering ten attractive programs in its traditional chamber music series in the hr-Sendesaal.

Guest conductors include Kent Nagano, Manfred Honeck, Dalia Stasevska, Ton Koopman, Tabita Berglund, Roderick Cox, Ivan Repušić, Stephanie Childress, David Robertson, Katharina Wincor, Brad Lubman and Philippe Herreweghe.

The Frankfurt Radio Symphony welcomes internationally renowned soloists including violinists Vilde Frang, Leonidas Kavakos, Renaud Capuçon and Sergey Khachatryan, pianists Alexander Malofeev and Bertrand Chamayou as well as Julian Steckel, Jan Vogler and Alisa Weilerstein on cello.

Weilerstein will also present the expressive Cello Concerto by focus artist Unsuk Chin, in which the South Korean will demand everything from Weilerstein’s technique, from lyrical to extreme. The composer will contribute a total of three works to the season, one of them will be a German premiere.

»Artists in Residence«: Lucas and Arthur Jussen

For the first time, a piano duo takes up the residency with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony and immediately opens the new season with Francis Poulenc's brilliant Concerto for two Pianos at the Europa Open Air in front of many thousands of people. »We feel incredibly honored and happy to be Artists in Residence with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony this year,« say Lucas and Arthur Jussen. They emphasize that they will not only play the classical duo repertoire, but also »very exciting and probably more difficult pieces such as Béla Bartók or Benjamin Britten.«

The Dutch brothers Lucas and Arthur Jussen performed the work with the orchestra at the Alte Oper Frankfurt back in 2023, and even then, the audience was thrilled. The brothers could hardly save themselves from the many fans at the autograph session and remember it fondly: »It was great to play with Alain and the hr-Sinfonieorchester, we remember a very inspiring week in Frankfurt.« They are sure to enchant the people at the concerts in the Alte Oper Frankfurt and in the hr-Sendesaal. Their program includes Maurice Ravel and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as well as Franz Schubert's Fantasie for piano for four hands.

From the desk to the forest

The Frankfurt Radio Symphony is part of the »Orchestra of Change« initiative, and the musicians have been involved in environmental projects and sustainable concert activities for some time now. The forest concert, to which the Frankfurt Radio Symphony and the Frankfurt Radio Big Band will invite guests to the Taunus, is intended to contribute to environmental protection. The nature-oriented concert with subsequent tree planting is organized in cooperation with the WaldLiebe Waldschutzprojekt e.V. Neu-Anspach.

In the morning of the same day, an orchestra of around 100 German business executives, conducted by Alain Altinoglu, will perform a matinee concert in the hr-Sendesaal. As »The Management Symphony«, they regularly perform at a high level and invite renowned orchestras and conductors to coach and host their rehearsal phase every year.

»Music Adventure« - Music education for children, teenagers and young adults

Experience music as an adventure: One of the four Young Concerts of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony at the Alte Oper Frankfurt will become a »Music Adventure Game«, which the young audience can help to shape - the outcome is open! The orchestra is confronting the changing expectations and listening habits of the younger generation: solo bassoonist Theo Plath will also be answering questions from Hessian children at successful Konzert statt Schule, when he presents great orchestral music in the hr-Sendesaal. Traditionally, two exclusive school tours through Hesse are also planned.

Guest concerts and tours

In the 2025/26 season, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony has been invited to the Prague International Music Festival and the George Enescu International Festival in Bucharest. It will be touring in Spain and perform in Girona, Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia. The Frankfurt Radio Symphony will be performing at the Kissinger Sommer, at the Musikfest Berlin, the Konzerthaus Dortmund and the Dresdner Musikfestspiele.

102 concerts, 89 of them in Hesse

The Frankfurt Radio Symphony will perform a total of 102 concerts in the 2025/26 season, 89 of which will be in Hesse: In addition to its own concert series in Frankfurt and concerts at the Rheingau Music Festival, it will also perform at the Schlosstheater Fulda, the Stadttheater Gießen, Homberg (Efze), Wetzlar and Wiesbaden as well as at the Kasseler Musiktage, the Bad Hersfeld Festival, the Kronberg Festival and the Weilburger Schlosskonzerte. Nine chamber concerts in Hesse complete the orchestra's extensive concert activities in Hesse.

The Frankfurt Radio Symphony on all media channels

The Frankfurt Radio Symphony’s YouTube channel, which now has more than half a million subscribers, is one of the world's most successful non-commercial channels for classical music on this platform. In the coming season, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony is once again planning live video streams for its own website, in the ARD Mediathek and on ARTE Concert. Most concert programs will be broadcast live on the radio by hr2-kultur and will also be broadcast internationally via the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). Selected concert events are broadcast on hr-fernsehen, 3sat and Arte.

Tickets and advance booking

Advance sales for individual tickets start immediately by calling 069/155-2000. Subscriptions and tickets can also be purchased at www.hr-ticketcenter.de.

10 FOR TEENS: Teenagers pay only 10 euros per ticket for every concert in the »Große Reihe« in the Alte Oper or numerous concerts in the hr-Sendesaal: The »10 FOR TEENS« initiative offers a limited number of tickets for all people under the age of 20 – while stocks last.

U30-Ticket: The U30-Ticket guarantees young people under the age of 30 up to 50 percent discount on many of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony own events.

Concert magazine

The concert magazine 2025/26 of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony is available at the events of Hessischer Rundfunk, can be ordered from the ticket shop, phone: 069/155-2000, or downloaded directly as a PDF here. Download: concert magazine 2025/26 [PDF - 3mb]