Name: Sunday Matinee
Start: 2026-11-22T11:00:00
Location: Conservatory Concert Hall

Rafaell Altino

Kristoffer Hyldig

Emma Oemann

Berit Juul Rasmussen

Tone Sundgård Anker

Odense Symphony Orchestra

In 2026, we can once again open the doors to the international Carl Nielsen Competition; the competition where we both pay tribute to our great, world-class composer from Funen and the talented stars of tomorrow. Since its inception, the Carl Nielsen Competition has put Odense on the musical map, attracted some of the biggest names from abroad as judges and coaches, and a long list of the winners have become big guns on the international music scene. Now you will once again have the opportunity to see what the classical music world has to offer – and in 2026 it is the flute that is the protagonist of the competition. The competition offers three elimination rounds for the 24 hopeful talents who have made it through the eye of the needle before we can reveal the absolute winner of the competition. It will all be spiced up with community singing events, talks about music and Carl Nielsen and much more.

Nielsen's 3.

Odense Concert Hall

Look forward to a summer day filled with Morten Korch atmosphere and beautiful songs from the Danish film treasure when we take the stage in the Funen Village.

Once again, we transform the village into a musical film set when, together with Amalie Dollerup and Thomas Storm, we throw ourselves into music from Danish films and plays, Morten Korch idylls and the melodies we can all sing along to.

Er du dus med himlens fugle?

The Funen Village

Look forward to a summer day filled with Morten Korch atmosphere and beautiful songs from the Danish film treasure when we take the stage in the Funen Village.

Are You Fucking With The Birds Of The Sky?

The summer holidays are just around the corner, and before the orchestra packs its bags and throws itself into the hammock, we're going on a real musical journey. But where will the trip take us this time?

A Musical Journey

An evening in the company of WA Mozart is an evening that enriches the soul to the very core of its DNA. In Mozart we find playful lightness and refined elegance in such abundance that we can hardly comprehend it – and then also the gravitas and emotional weight that comes from having been a professional musician and a sparkling genius since he learned to walk. Mozart loved the clarinet's dark-colored cousin, the basset horn, and tonight we will enjoy the fourth of his five moody divertimenti for three basset horns. Mozart's otherworldly beautiful quintet for piano and winds also dates from the first half of the 1780s, which he himself described in a letter to his father as "the best thing I have written in my life".

Nyman, Kapustin & Mozart

Music has a way of settling in our bodies, and the program this evening is guaranteed to make it bubble in every cell. Dvořák's early masterpiece, Serenade for Strings, helped open the doors to the sacred halls of music for the young composer and is a work that is bursting with zest for life, youthful courage, joy and faith in the future – music that is also an opportunity for our wonderful string corps to really sharpen their bows and interplay, undisturbed by noisy colleagues.

Dvořák & Gulda's Cello Concert

If you love big melodies, drama, wild virtuosity and the great emotions that music has a unique ability to evoke in us, then this is the program for you. With the second all-Tchaikovsky program of the season, chief conductor Pierre Bleuse spotlights Tchaikovsky as a symphonist and as the redeemer of the “instrumental concerto” genre. Few themes in the world are as easily recognizable as the opening of the almost legendary Piano Concerto No. 1, when the entire horn group sets off and leaves the stage to the giant chords that have become a caricature of the piano concerto as a concept. But there is no caricature here, because after the world-famous introduction, a labyrinth of imagination and melody reveals itself in a concerto that was considered messy and challenging in its time, but which Tchaikovsky fortunately insisted on publishing in unchanged form, so that today we can revel in the cornucopia of piano cascades and sublime interplay between soloist and orchestra that came to set the standard for all piano concertos thereafter.

Tchaikovsky's 1st Piano Concert & 5th Symphony

In the encounter with great art, we encounter ourselves more than anything else, and few places in life do we have a better chance of reaching a deeper sod in the encounter with our innermost thoughts and feelings than during one of Mahler's unfathomable symphonies, which are in every way too great to describe in words. And this is perhaps especially true of his very last completed work, the 9th symphony, which he was so afraid to write because great composers usually die after the 9th. And so did Mahler. That is why it is often described as a farewell – to life, to the work of composing and to his beloved wife. But the truth is that it is a symphony that is like a piece of life, cut into thick slices; it contains everything in a way, and it lets us project ourselves into the pain, the joy, the melancholy, the love – and the sadness of having to let it all go. It is an indescribable experience to witness Mahler's 9th Symphony LIVE in the concert hall, and it is very rare that you get the chance, so we are taking advantage of this season, where we are performing it in collaboration with our symphonic friends at Copenhagen Phil.

Mahlers 9.

Two of classical music's most beloved and popular works compete for attention this evening, with both Rachmaninov's sumptuously melodious 2nd Piano Concerto and Smetana's superhit Mà Vlast being placed in the hands of the energetic young conductor Nicolò Foron, who took both audience and orchestra by storm last season.

Má Vlast & Rakhmaninov's 2nd Piano Concert

Icelandic Anna Thorvaldsdottir is one of classical music's brightest superstars right now, and the Odense Symphony Orchestra has made a big splash by, together with the BBC Proms, San Francisco Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic and Iceland Symphony Orchestra, commissioning a monumental cello concerto by the uncompromising sound designer. The work was premiered last year in the US and at the BBC Proms, and the review from there reads: “Thorvaldsdottir's new cello concerto, Before we fall , is a hit, both sonically and intellectually… Her sound world, delicate and massive at the same time, is like no other. And Johannes Moser plays throughout with both nerve-wracking splendor and fierce intimacy.”

Mahlers 4.

There is a power older than time itself. A power that summons heroes, brings ancient kingdoms to life, but also allows shadows to move into the heart of even the bravest soul. It is the power of adventure.

Fantasy Concert

That's what it says on our website, and it's true, but the small text doesn't reveal how OS has captivated the audience, provided intense experiences, invited them to quiet moments with soloists and conductors from all over the world and lifted the roof of the concert hall. It also doesn't tell us about our work with young talents, concerts for and with children of all ages and collaborations with, for example, Odense Theatre, the Royal Theatre's Ballet School, the region's high schools, the Carl Nielsen Museum and others.