Columbus Symphony Launches 75th Anniversary Season

Music Director Rossen Milanov and the Columbus Symphony (CSO) kick off the orchestra’s milestone 75th anniversary season with a fall lineup featuring renowned guest artists, a world premiere, and a landmark choral work, with performances at the Ohio Theatre and a historic return to Carnegie Hall in October.

“Since 1951, the Columbus Symphony has been a vital pillar of the Columbus arts community, and this anniversary season is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate our 75 years of building musical connections within Central Ohio,” Milanov said. “We are so grateful to the audiences who have consistently supported our orchestra, and we are excited to look to the future as we bring together extraordinary guest artists, premiere new works, and honor enduring masterpieces. Taking this spirit and exceptional artistry to Carnegie Hall, 25 years after the Symphony last performed there, is a particularly meaningful milestone.”

Milanov opens the season on Friday and Saturday, September 18 & 19, at the Ohio Theatre, with guest pianist and rising star Eva Gevorgyan. In a meeting of contemporary voices and enduring masterworks, Bulgarian-British composer Dobrinka Tabokova’s Orpheus’ Comet opens the program, followed by Rachmaninoff’s virtuosic Third Piano Concerto, featuring Gevorgyan, who Gramophone has praised for “her sonority at all dynamic levels.” Closing this season-opening program is Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, which showcases the full orchestra with masterful moments for nearly every instrument.

Violinist Aubree Oliverson brings her “silvery tone, technical savvy, and . . . musical wisdom” (The Aspen Times) back to Columbus Symphony for a program of Dvořák, Brahms, and William Grant Still, led by Milanov, on Friday and Saturday, October 2 & 3, at the Ohio Theatre. Serenade, Still’s moving 1957 piece reflecting his interest in American folk idioms, is followed by Dvořák’s famously challenging Violin Concerto. Brahms’ lyrical Second Symphony completes the program.

October continues with CSO’s triumphant return to Carnegie Hall on Wednesday, October 28. Milanov leads the CSO in two New York premieres: a new Columbus Symphony-commissioned work from American composer Gregory Spears titled The Mysteries, and acclaimed bass-baritone Davóne Tines’ Concerto No. 2: ANTHEM.

Milanov will lead the Columbus Symphony in the world premiere of The Mysteries on Friday, October 23 and Saturday, October 24, 2026 at the Ohio Theatre in Columbus.

Of The Mysteries, Spears’ largest purely orchestral work to date, the composer writes, “In a chaotic world where we crave certainty, art can help us confront the mysteries hiding in plain sight. This three-movement piece (lasting 27 minutes) begins with small musical fragments that might seem familiar – a medieval fanfare, a tragic crashing chord, a warm ambient texture, a chaconne, a chant-like refrain. These musical objects are repeated, recombined, and layered in ways that allow us to hear them in new ways. Rather than trying to evoke a commonplace idea of the “mystical,’ this piece is more concerned with re-imagining commonplace musical materials in ways that reveal their ambiguities and emotional depths. The first movement does this in a collage-like way, where the music snaps from one idea to another. The second is more solemn, repeating small phrases that evoke devotional forms like the litany. The third movement explores a process of fragmentation where a song is invaded by gaps of silence, as if the music could be turned on and off like a switch. This last movement is a meditation on absence, inspired by the disintegrating textures of late-Romanticism. It evokes an autumnal world in which decay and opulence can co-exist.”

Created by Tines, Concerto No. 2: ANTHEM is a work for voice and orchestra that explores nationhood, identity and competing visions of America, featuring music by Caroline Shaw and Tyshawn Sorey, arrangements by Michael Schachter and Tines, and poetry by Mahogany L. Browne.

Following the traditional concerto form, Concerto No. 2: ANTHEM opens with an arrangement of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” including its lesser-known verses, by composer Michael Schachter. The work then progresses into text by Lincoln Center’s first Poet in Residence, Mahogany L. Browne, followed by “Americana? v. Oh Freedom,” co-composed by Tines’ frequent collaborators, Pulitzer Prize winners Caroline Shaw and Tyshawn Sorey. The concerto closes with the Black National Anthem “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” in an arrangement by Schachter and Tines. The work asks “what should we, as a nation, be aspiring to?…what other songs might better articulate and speak to a need deeper than the notion of life for one by way of conquering another?”

Concerto No. 2: ANTHEM received its world premiere with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor Joseph Young at the Hollywood Bowl in August 2022.

CSO and the Columbus Symphony Chorus join forces on Friday & Saturday, November 20 & 21 for Verdi’s monumental Requiem. One of the most celebrated works of the choral repertoire, this dramatic setting of the ancient Catholic funeral mass unfolds as a powerful meditation on mortality, judgment, and redemption. With its soaring choral writing, demanding solo passages, and dramatic contrasts, Verdi’s Requiem moves between moments of intimate reflection and extraordinary intensity.