This is my final season as the Artistic Leader and Chief Conductor of the TSO. I am so very proud of our journey together these last 12 years - yes, I have officially been a part of the TSO for that long, first as the Principal Guest and then these last 8 years as the Artistic Leader and Chief Conductor. And how the time flew, and how much fun we had!

For me, all great works of music are created to tell a “story” of great emotional depth and spiritual insight, and such inspiring Music weave through our joyful collaboration together - a collaboration and cooperation which was all about the Music. Music was the reason, Music was the guiding principle, Music was the ultimate goal - for all our endeavors.

And now, as TSO and I embark on this final chapter of our history, I invite you to join us as we celebrate the culmination of our music making with some of the greatest works written for the orchestra. I have such high expectations, that this final season will see us harvest all the years of hard work we put into building and refining our way of music making, at heart shaped by the honest passion for and total commitment to the Great Music we are so fortunate to serve.

We start the season with the Ultimate Challenge (!) : Mahler’s 6th symphony, which is perhaps the most enigmatic and the most challenging of all his symphonies, one that ends in a crushing defeat, a tragic minor chord. It is a work of an enormous mind and heart embracing the whole panorama of Life. The famous hammer blows (thought to represent the unavoidable “fate”) in the last movement adds to the extraordinary emotional weight of this “tragic” symphony written during a time in the composer’s life when he was the happiest - before all the tragedies of his personal life started coming for him. It is a litmus test for an orchestra - for its collective stamina, imagination & fantasy, its ability to dig deep, express everything every note, and still to persevere with one single purpose until the last note. And as always with Mahler - this music is so full of soul, his soul, which holds the the whole range of human feelings, not just the joys, and I even suspect he held all the sorrows, sadness, pain, difficulties and suffering with even more love as it were…. The 6th lingers in the heart long after the last note dies away, to be pondered again and again. It’s absolutely one of the greatest examples of the power of Music.

Another highlight this season is the four complete symphonies of Brahms, which we perform in contrasting pairs that together make up a compelling and intimate portrait of Brahms. He was famous for fastidiously destroying personal papers, letters, and diaries during his lifetime because he knew that posterity would come digging into his personal life and he was not going to let that happen! What we lack in knowing him through private writings or his well known portraits (with his imposing beard hiding most of his face!) - his tenderness, humour, nostalgia, vulnerability, the joy!, the raging passions of his heart, and the logic and power of his mind as well as his soaring unstoppable imagination - all this and more are all there for us to discover in his symphonies. Every movement of every symphony is a facet of its fascinating creator and all together they form the complete person of Brahms. I am so excited to share this complete symphonic portrait of Brahms with all of you.

Elsewhere in the season, we play two important works of the 21st century symphonic repertoire: Shostakovich 10th and Prokofiev 5th. The two genius composers, both profoundly shaped by life under the suffocating Soviet regime, dealt with the terror in such different ways. Shostakovich with irony and tragic seriousness created music as strong as steel but as fragile as a pressure-cooker just about ready to explode… and Prokofiev with his unmistakable fantasy, wit, and imagination, created absolutely gorgeous music full of humanity yet also of acidic sarcasm. The protagonist of both symphonies is of course Man - the individual. Each of these symphonies are a study in human nature, human resilience, human integrity, and ultimately, the human being.

In January 2025, a special salute to Ravel, whose 150th birth anniversary year it is! A magician of an orchestrator, a brilliant architect of structure, and then letting it all go in that sensuous artistic soul of his music! We of course perform his most famous work, Bolero - that perfect study of obsession, control, intention and abandon.

And our final week together! I am so much looking forward to this program of Beethoven and Mahler, my two heroes whose body of works I made every effort to program regularly and often. These two are the foundation of symphonic Music, these two created the modern day Orchestra. These two are essential to forming an Orchestra’s musical character. These two are the unsurpassed revolutionaries & visionaries to this day, whose Music transcend the limits of a historical epoch and continue to inspire and move peoples across societies and cultures.

Across the boundaries - of time, cultures, language, all factors divisive in our world - there stands Music for all. May this great music nourish your soul, inspire your heart, and bring you much joy! For this our ultimate season together, I invite you to enjoy another great Musical Feast with us.

Han-Na Chang