The West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO) is set to charm audiences in 2025 with a spectacular array of performances that traverse musical genres and styles. From the orchestral grandeur of Brahms and Schumann to the operatic drama of Puccini's Madama Butterfly and the cinematic allure of Star Wars: The Last Jedi in concert, WASO promises an unforgettable experience. Join us as we delve into the details of these events and explore the contributions of renowned artists like Edward Gardner, Simone Lamsma, and Vasily Petrenko, who bring these musical masterpieces to life.

A Musical Odyssey: Highlights from WASO's 2025 Season

Fifteen years of creation revealed over three stunning concerts – enjoy a portrait of Beethoven as the creative maverick, poet and genius. Beethoven’s ground-breaking piano concertos established him as one of the greatest of all composers.

Beethoven: The Piano Concertos

The University of Western Australia

Composed when he was just 18, Mozart’s Symphony No.29 is a musical gem that sparkles with elegance and vitality. Tchaikovsky pays tribute to Mozart in his Variations on a Rococo Theme, and its grace and dashing virtuosity will be brought to life by Li-Wei Qin. To conclude our MACA Symphonic  Series, Asher Fisch leads the Orchestra through highlights from Wagner’s ground-breaking operas, showcasing WASO’s full grandeur and power.

Li-Wei Qin Plays Tchaikovsky

Tchaikovsky pays tribute to Mozart in his Variations on a Rococo Theme and its elegance, grace and dashing virtuosity will be brought to life by Li-Wei Qin. To conclude our Matinee Symphony Series, Asher Fisch leads the Orchestra through highlights from Wagner’s ground-breaking operas, showcasing WASO’s full grandeur and power at Winthrop Hall.

Li-Wei Qin Plays Tchaikovsky - Matinee

Get ready for a genre-bending spectacle as indie-pop duo Lime Cordiale team up with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra for an unforgettable concert! Experience their biggest hits like never before – lush, cinematic, and more electrifying than ever.

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Lime Cordiale with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra

Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre

Be transported through the centuries as the WASO Chorus performs an exquisite selection of sacred choral works from the height of the Renaissance to the modern day. The majestic power of two organs will fill St Mary’s Cathedral and ethereal voices will soar, showcasing the beauty and power of choral music.

WASO Chorus Sings: Sacred

Saint Mary's Cathedral

Explore the exhilarating diversity of music by six of Australia’s most creative composers, led by one of the most exciting young conductors in the country. Works by Lachlan Skipworth, Olivia Davies and Melody Eötvös will be accompanied by evocative moving images. Jordan Moore and Stephen de Filippo will unleash powerful, visceral volleys of sound and Kate Moore explores our sense of time with pulsating clouds of harmony. This is Australian music. Here and now.

Pandaemonium

State Theatre Centre of WA

Shaun Lee-Chen, acclaimed Concertmaster of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, leads WASO in this celebration of the family Bach. Heinrich Bach’s charming Sonata in F sets the stage for this showcase of Baroque elegance before WASO's Acting Principal Oboe, Liz Chee, joins Lee-Chen to perform J.S. Bach’s vibrant Concerto for Violin and Oboe.

Bach to Bach

His Majesty's Theatre

Verdi’s masterwork Il trovatore is a tangled web of vengeance, rivalry, and regret. This is grand opera at its most dramatic.

When a gypsy woman is burnt at the stake for allegedly bewitching a child, her daughter, Azucena, swears revenge.

Azucena steals the child’s brother to throw him into the flames of her mother’s burning pyre, however, accidentally throws in her own child. Horrified by her mistake, she brings up the stolen child as her own. This haunting family secret lays the groundwork for Verdi’s tragedy.

Il trovatore

Zoltán Kodály’s colourful Variations on a Hungarian Folksong sets the tone for this folk-inspired program. WASO’s own Principal Viola, Daniel Schmitt, takes centre stage for Bartók’s Viola Concerto, his final, elegiac work, full of the folk-music influences which so fascinated him. The sheer number of unforgettable melodies that fill Dvořák’s New World Symphony has ensured its timeless popularity.

Asher Fisch Conducts Dvořák 9

Get ready for a spellbinding symphonic event! Grab your capes and wands as WASO whisks you away on an enchanting journey through magical worlds. With thrilling music from Harry Potter, Wicked, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Stravinsky’s Firebird, this concert promises an unforgettable experience filled with wizardry and wonder!

Classic Adventures: Witches & Wizards

Few WASO debuts are met with the ecstatic acclaim that greeted Vasily Petrenko’s in 2022. He returns in 2025 with Walton’s grand Spitfire Prelude and Fugue and Vaughan Williams’ profoundly moving Fifth Symphony. Associate Principal Clarinet, Som Howie, makes his WASO concerto debut with Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto – a timeless masterpiece of expressive elegance and virtuosic flair.

Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto

Few WASO debuts are met with the ecstatic acclaim that greeted Vasily Petrenko’s in 2022. He returns in 2025 with Walton’s grand Spitfire Prelude and Fugue and Vaughan Williams’ profoundly moving Fifth Symphony.

Prelude to Peace - Matinee

Our final Chamber Series concert opens with Aaron Wyatt’s Cirrus, a moving exploration of the relationship between modernity and the natural world and the beauty of ordinary things. Meyer’s unique composition style makes his String Quintet a must-hear. The program concludes with Beethoven’s acclaimed Septet in E flat, a work so charming that many regard it as the finest septet ever composed.

Chamber Series: Serenade

Government House, Western Australia

The mesmeric lure of the ocean inspires this powerful program. Wagner’s Flying Dutchman depicts a legendary ghostly ship, doomed to sail forever. Paul Stanhope’s Mahāsāgar draws inspiration from the beauty, danger and sense of place defined by the vast Indian Ocean. Ravel’s Une barque sur l’ocean evokes a lonely ship at sea, and the aqueous textures of Debussy’s impressionistic masterpiece La Mer portray the ocean’s ever-changing surface and eternal depths.

La Mer

Dutch violinist Simone Lamsma is known worldwide for her polished, expressive and intense playing, and she returns to WASO with Bruch’s ever-popular First Violin Concerto. The dark ambition and ruthless fury of Shakespeare’s iconic tyrant is brought thrillingly to life in Strauss’ early tone poem, Macbeth, performed by WASO for the very first time. Asher Fisch then leads the Orchestra in Schumann’s Symphony No.4, a work of passionate urgency and grand emotions.

Passion and Power: Bruch’s Violin Concerto

Bunbury Regional Entertainment Centre (BREC)

Goldfields Arts Centre

Bruch’s Violin Concerto

The dark ambition and ruthless fury of Shakespeare’s iconic tyrant is brought thrillingly to life in Strauss’ early tone poem, Macbeth, performed by WASO for the very first time. Asher Fisch then leads the Orchestra in Schumann’s Symphony No.4, a work of passionate urgency and grand emotions.

Ruthless Romance - Matinee

Charm and innovation collide in Brahms’ String Sextet No.2. The grand orchestral experience is distilled to a single ground-breaking movement in Schoenberg’s boundary-pushing First Chamber Symphony. A suite of dramatic and vivid string quartets showcases the creative talents of Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin.

Chamber Series: Rapture

One of the world’s best-loved, most-performed operas returns to His Majesty’s Theatre for the first time in a decade.

Puccini’s beautiful and powerful opera shatters the hearts of its audience with its devastating story of betrayal set against the backdrop of 1904 Nagasaki, Japan.

The American, Lieutenant Pinkerton, marries young geisha Cio-Cio-San, and she believes his love is true. After Pinkerton returns to the United States, she bears a son and waits faithfully for his return. What follows remains one of opera’s most tragic stories.

Madama Butterfly

Experience the action-packed film, The Last Jedi, from the legendary Star Wars saga on a giant screen with John Williams’ epic score performed live on stage by WASO.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi in Concert

WASO is thrilled to welcome Edward Gardner, Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, for his long-awaited WASO debut. Brahms may have taken nearly 20 years to complete his First Symphony, but he produced a masterpiece that grips your attention from its ominous opening to its overwhelming, exultant conclusion. Acclaimed soprano Samantha Clarke joins Gardner in Britten’s sensuous and evocative song cycle, Les Illuminations.

Edward Gardner Conducts Brahms

Louis Andriessen was a maverick, provocateur, and the uncompromising godfather of European minimalism. In the 1970s and '80s, he shattered the boundaries between classical, jazz, and rock with a fiercely political edge and a defiantly amplified sound. Rejecting the lush traditions of the past, he championed stripped-back textures, pounding rhythms, and an ensemble of brass, electric guitars, and saxophones, more garage band than orchestra. Andriessen didn’t just compose; he confronted.

Danceworks

Join players from WASO and the emerging composers of the 2025 Composition Project for the world premiere performances of their works. Under the mentorship of James Ledger and Olivia Davies, through a series of lessons, workshops and rehearsals, young Australian composers have the opportunity to create a new work for a 14-piece chamber ensemble that will be performed live by WASO musicians.

Composition Project

Acclaimed Dutch conductor Otto Tausk reunites with WASO to lead this enthralling concert. One of his most celebrated and enduring works, Poulenc’s Gloria expresses the sacred through a captivating mixture of lush harmonies, deep solemnity and a playful spirit. Debussy’s Nocturnes enchants with its dreamlike soundscapes and serene, shifting hues of twilight. You’ll be intrigued and delighted by the vibrant music of award-winning Australian composer, Andrew Schultz.

Glorious Nights

From aliens and superheroes to ancient artefacts and prehistoric giants, journey through time and space with WASO and conductor Nicholas Buc as the iconic soundtracks of John Williams take centre stage in this spectacular concert event – live, powerful, and screen-free. Hosted by Art of the Score podcasters Dan Golding and Andrew Pogson, you'll experience the full power and magic of the legendary music which has shaped cinema history.

The Music of John Williams

Hurrah for The Pirate King! Gilbert and Sullivan’s uproariously silly operetta The Pirates of Penzance storms the stage of His Majesty’s Theatre for a romp across the high seas and to the Motherland.

Bursting with much-loved music, the score will leave you grinning with classics including ‘I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General’, ‘Poor Wandering One’ and ‘I am the Pirate King’.

The Pirates of Penzance

Thrilling acrobatics and striking video design combine to take us to hell and back in Circa’s awe-inspiring production. Set to some of the most stirring music ever written, this is opera like you’ve never seen before.

Orpheus & Eurydice

Murray Bail’s Miles Franklin Award-winning novel Eucalyptus comes to life in music in this in-concert world premiere of a new opera from acclaimed Australian composer Jonathan Mills.

Eucalyptus

Perth Concert Hall

Experience a concert of epic proportions when the West Australian Symphony Orchestra presents Gladiator live in concert.

Gladiator in Concert

Talented community musicians and educators sit side-by-side with WASO for a bucket list experience, performing together in the grand setting of Winthrop Hall. Share in the magic and witness this incredible performance come to life.

West Australian Symphony Orchestra

5 - 6 Dec, 2025

Gladiator in Concert

Jun 28, 2026

Side-By-Side Symphony

26 - 30 Nov, 2025

Beethoven: The Piano Concertos

21 - 22 Nov, 2025

Li-Wei Qin Plays Tchaikovsky

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