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Mahler’s symphonies are his spiritual autobiographies, laying out his experiences and suffering for all to hear. His strikingly confident Symphony No. 1 of 1889 is cast in two parts: first the optimism and energy of youth; then the crisis of rejection and death. Yet Mahler’s symphony powers towards an exultant conclusion, overtly popular in style and imbued with a new confidence – the confidence of life itself. Marios Papadopoulos conducts Mahler’s Titanic symphony here after the world premiere of Sisyphus by University of Oxford and OPO Composers' Workshop alumnus Marcello Palazzo and another work from our Composer-in-Residence Alexey Shor: with unexpected twists in its traditional structure, Shor’s Piano Concerto No. 1 blends nostalgia and exhilaration, and features the remarkable soloist Behzod Abduraimov.

It’s all fun and games today as the musicians of the Oxford Philharmonic and Alasdair Malloy open up their tuneful toybox and play music to match the contents. They’ll be bringing favourite toys to life with music and counting down the top ten toys of all time as they go! What do you think they will find in there?

Marios Papadopoulos takes the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra through the momentous symphonic dance that is Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, a work whose pounding, marching and pirouetting permanently realigned western music’s fundamental relationship between rhythm and harmony. Another of our own musicians, Concertmaster Carmine Lauri, is the soloist in the most lyrical and operatic violin concerto by the great guru of virtuosity, Niccolò Paganini, a work that will fill the Sheldonian Theatre with rococo elegance. To open, all the ferocity and impact of one of Beethoven’s most striking orchestral overtures, ‘Coriolan’.

Tchaikovsky described his Symphony No. 6 as ‘the best thing I have ever composed or will compose.’ It presents the culmination of the composer’s thoughts on life and love, subjects on which this tortured individual had plenty to say, while leading a symphony orchestra to bear its soul and casting a spell on audiences like no other symphony of its era. Andrew Litton conducts this pivotal symphony, having navigated the stormy waters of Wagner’s Prelude to The Flying Dutchman, and is joined by the Orchestra’s Solo Cello Mats Lidström in the performance of his own concerto marking the centenary of the birth of Robert F Kennedy.

One of Britain’s genuine musical heroes, John Lubbock leads the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra in a celebration of the genius of a composer with close links to the city and university, Joseph Haydn. Bookending the programme are the Austrian composer’s unremitting symphony on Christ’s passion and the celebratory work he conducted himself at the Sheldonian Theatre on receiving his honorary doctorate here, the ‘Oxford’ Symphony. Alongside the composer’s gleaming trumpet concerto, we hear John’s own arrangements of intriguing salutes to Haydn by composers from another time and territory: Debussy and Ravel.

Angela Gheorghiu, one of the most glamorous and gifted opera singers of our time, returns to perform with the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra to close the season at the Sheldonian Theatre. Together, they will celebrate a composer to whom she has dedicated a lifetime: Puccini. After landmark appearances as his heroines Tosca and Madama Butterfly on the world’s greatest opera stages, Gheorghiu performs the most beloved arias from Puccini’s operas, while the orchestra brings its storytelling talents to bear in enchanting overtures and tragic intermezzos from favourite operas and operettas.