I spent my summer digging through an inspiring collection of music and names. Collating Gramophone’s latest Season Preview, it’s heartening to see such a wide range of music, faces and places; so much so different, yet all united by a shared love of what we call ‘classical’. Live music is well and truly back.

What can we expect? Well, firstly, there are some major birthdays. Namely, lots of 150ths. Vaughan Williams’s will be marked globally, from the NHK Symphony Orchestra to the Bach Choir (the latter a personal tribute, given RVW served as their Music Director in the 1920s). Also celebrating 150 years is Rachmaninov, who will be presented by the likes of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the Baltimore Symphony; the latter will be joined by a direct descendent of the composer – Olga Kern – in a performance of his Piano Concerto No 3. There’s also a 150th nod to Hugo Alfvén, courtesy of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic.

Expect many major birthdays for ensembles, too, from the 10th Birthday of Il Pomo d’Oro, to the 20th of the Southbank Sinfonia, the 50th of Chicago Opera Theater, the 60th of Scottish Opera and the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, the 75th of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and a whopping 175th for Barcelona’s Liceu. We’re going to need a big cake.

The Royal Festival Hall by Morley von Sternberg

But what about the music? The continued relevance and deep human spirit of classical music is immediately apparent, with seasons responding to the turbulence of world events. The Ukraine crisis and the issue of refugees, exile and war will be explored by the London Philharmonic, Bournemouth Symphony and Bavarian State Opera, while the climate emergency and natural world will be addressed with a nature theme from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Then, a positive melange of modern emergencies will be explored by the Lyric Opera of Chicago, whose triptych ‘Proximity’ will unite six American composers and librettists to explore themes of gun violence, social media and climate change. These season plans underline the continued role classical music plays in helping us come to terms with the world around us. Contrary to the connotations of the word ‘classic’, ‘classical’ doesn’t have to mean old.

There’s a clear and welcome growth in presence of composers from diverse backgrounds. Opera North will unite singers and players from South Asian and Western Classical traditions in a staging of Monteverdi’s Orpheus, while the Royal Scottish National Orchestra present a triple focus on William Levi Dawson, William Grant Still and George Walker, thanks to their Assistant Conductor Kellen Gray. The Detroit Symphony Orchestra host a powerful showcase of music from 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Music winner Anthony Davis, the latter’s own tense encounter with police inspiring his You Have The Right To Remain Silent. Carlos Simon’s music will also appear in Detroit (in the form of a new Trombone Concerto), as well as over at Washington National Opera, where his new stage work The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson premieres in January; it will explore the lady behind the longest-running all-black opera company.

As this all suggests, classical music is a great treasure chest of human stories, and there are plenty of lesser-known names with powerful and surprising histories to encounter. The Bergen Philharmonic will showcase Harald Sæverud; living on the outskirts of Bergen in the Second World War, Sæverud wrote several symphonic works that protested against the Nazi occupation of Norway. Elsewhere, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen will spotlight William Shield, a friend to Haydn and Britain’s Master of the King’s Musick from 1817.

Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, © BBC

But the new season is not just full of historical figures with an enduring relevance to the present. As a composer in my early twenties, it was extremely heartening for me to see a huge panoply of young talent given major stages. 2021 Cardiff Singer of the World Song Prize winner Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha will appear at London’s Wigmore Hall, while organist-of-the-moment Anna Lapwood will debut with Manchester’s Hallé in a performance of Saint-Saëns’s Organ Symphony. Overseas, the Orchestre nationale du Capitole de Toulouse will host many sub-thirty-year-olds, including violinist Chad Hoopes and pianist Tom Borrow.

As many ensembles and venues come to host their first full live season in years, this is a chance to look to the future. Let’s do just that, with my top ten season highlights…

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra

With a Ukrainian-born Chief Conductor in Kirill Karabits, there will be poignant tributes to his homeland with ‘Voices From The East’, a showcase of Eastern European composers past and present. There’s a world premiere of a Ukrainian Cello Concerto… that’s already one hundred years old. Feodor Akimenko is the composer in question, a man who studied with Rimsky-Korsakov and was Stravinsky’s first composition teacher; many of his compositions feature Ukrainian themes and draw on that nation’s folksong. Sample his 3 Morceaux for a taste of his distinct brand of lyrical melancholia…

Theodore Akimenko – 3 Morceaux, op.31 no.1, Cantabile

Tatiana Chulochnikova vln / Anastasia Dedik pno

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Elena Dubinets is at the helm as Artistic Director, as the LPO celebrates its 90th birthday. Interviewing her for my Scala Radio show, Dubinets was frank about her own experiences travelling the world and trying to find a sense of home, having left her native Russia; ‘A Place To Call Home’ is a running strand through the new season, exploring exile, displacement and identity. Expect music from the Ukrainian Victoria Vita Poleva, Austrian Erich Korngold and Cuban Tania León, among many others.

One name jumps out at me though, having stumbled across his work earlier this year. Syrian composer and clarinettist Kinan Azmeh studied at Juilliard and has shared a stage with Daniel Barenboim and Yo-Yo Ma, formed his own Arab-Jazz Quartet called CityBand, and helped open the Damascus Opera House by performing at its opening concert. He’s celebrated for bringing high-energy improvisation and riotous clarinet virtuosity to the orchestral scene. Before those qualities are showcased by the LPO with the UK premiere of his Clarinet Concerto and a late-night chamber concert in January, we can enjoy the dusky colours, relentless build and improvisatory freedom of his Suite for Improvisor & Orchestra.

Kinan Azmeh – Suite for Improvisor & Orchestra: III. Wedding

Kinan Azmeh clt / Deustches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin / Manuel Nawri cond

English National Opera

Over 50% of all ENO attendees are now first-time bookers, and the new season certainly presents something for everyone. Jake Heggie’s operatic retelling of the film classic It’s A Wonderful Life will have its UK premiere, while Jo Davies will direct the company’s first-ever production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Yeomen of the Guard. Then, in 2023, there’s a production of Korngold’s youthful gem The Dead City and a European premiere for Blue, exploring police violence against African American communities. The score is by Broadway composer Jeanine Tesori, who creates a fascinating hybrid; an ominously percussive Prologue gives way to jazzy syncopations in ‘Damn, Girl’, which soon blossoms into the heartfelt lyricism of ‘I Love Him’.

Jeanine Tesori – Blue: Act 1 Scene 1, I Love Him

Briana Hunter / Washington National Opera Orchestra / Roderick Cox cond

London Chamber Orchestra

Now entering its second century, the LCO is looking to the future with youth at the heart of its programme. Hot on the heels of Freya Waley-Cohen will be their new Composer-in-Residence, 29-year-old Dani Howard; she’s had a stellar few years, having debuted with the London Symphony Orchestra in 2019, and last year won a Royal Philharmonic Society Award for her Trombone Concerto for Peter Moore and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. Howard’s Fanfare will be the very first notes sounded in the LCO’s new season, while later her new saxophone concerto will be premiered by Jess Gillam. Other ones-to-watch include appearances from horn player Ben Goldscheider, pianist Elizabeth Brauß and trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin Vary.

23-year-old Lucienne is equally at home with jazz and big bands as she is in classical repertoire; her second album for Warner Classics, ‘Mademoiselle in New York’ – taking in everything from Ravel to Charles Aznavour – more than demonstrates her versatility.

Louis Thomas Hardin – Bird’s Lament

Lucienne Renaudin Vary tpt / BBC Concert Orchestra / Bill Elliott cond

Liceu Barcelona

Celebrating its 175th Birthday, there’s a memorable piece that will depict the very streets on which the opera house stands. La Gata Perduda has music by popular guitarist-singer Arnau Tordera, who dubs the piece as ‘something between an opera and a musical’. Also on stage this season will be René Jacobs and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra with a concert retelling of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, and Lise Davidsen in Puccini’s Il trittico.

The Liceu was originally a kind of educational institution, created to present operas performed by students at the local conservatory. Unlike many of its continental counterparts, the Liceu was funded by private shareholders rather than owned and managed by a monarch; it is, therefore, one of the few opera houses to have no royal box. It’s certainly had its share of challenges, having been destroyed by fire in 1994 and only reopened in 1999; more recently, it faced the pandemic by performing an opera for an audience of over 2000 plants. To celebrate Catalonia’s historic opera house, why not sample one of the region’s great composers…

Isaac Albéniz – Suite Española, op. 47 no.5, Asturias

Andrés Segovia gtr

Palazzetto Bru Zane

A cycle of Massenet operas forms one strand of their new season, while another champions women composers; there’s a satisfying collection of unfamiliar names, from Clémence de Grandval (who wrote a number of operas, and studied with Saint-Saëns and Chopin) to Marie Jaëll (a pianist who studied with Franck, Saint-Saëns and Widor). Palazzetto Bru Zane are determined to encourage a revival of these long-neglected writers.

Among the works on the programme is Fausto by Louise Bertin, taking after Goethe’s Faust and first seen in Paris in 1831. Bertin is well worth further exploration; she penned her first opera aged twenty (to her own libretto), and at 22 was collaborating with Eugène Scribe on a piece staged at the Opéra Comique. She did all this despite being partially paralysed from birth, and facing significant patriarchal opposition to her pursuit of a career as a composer. The struggle continues though, given the notable lack of recordings of many of these composers; Mel Bonis is one of the few lesser-known names to at least be represented several times on record. Cue this gem of an album from DONNE Ambassador, Antonio Oyarzabal.

Mel Bonis – Desdémona

Antonio Oyarzabal pno

Boston Symphony Orchestra

The stars are out in force for the BSO’s latest season, with appearances from Lang Lang, Yuja Wang, Nicola Benedetti (in her BSO debut) and Midori (twenty years on from her last collaboration with the ensemble).

A civil rights activist and gospel music are at the heart of The Passion of Octavius Catto; it tells the tale of a campaigner with a noted talent for baseball, who helped achieve the abolition of slavery in America but was murdered as he tried to exercise his right to vote on election day in 1871.The music is by jazz pianist and composer Uri Caine, who originally scored the piece for jazz trio, chamber orchestra and gospel choir; it’s a Passion for the modern age. Indeed, Caine is a fascinating figure of musical crossover and dialogue; he studied with George Rochberg and George Crumb, worked in a group led by John Zorn, and in 1997 released a memorable jazz reworking of Mahler.

Mahler / Uri Caine – Symphony No 5: Funeral March

Uri Caine Ensemble / Uri Caine pno

Chicago Opera Theater

I was really keen to include this organisation in Gramophone’s Season Preview, the first time they’ve been listed. 2023 will mark COT’s 50th birthday year, and there’s reason to celebrate… COT place an emphasis on new work, having already presented 78 Chicago premieres; in 2018, it launched the Vanguard Initiative, which gives emerging opera composers the chance to be mentored by composer Jake Heggie, observe rehearsals and write a 60-90 minute chamber opera for public performance. New opera to watch out for in the 2022/23 Season includes the world premiere of The Life And Death(s) of Alan Turing, with music by Justine F Chen and a libretto by David Simpatico.

That work will be conducted by COT’s inspiring Music Director, Lidiya Yankovskaya. She is one of only two women to work as Music Director at a multimillion-dollar opera company in the US, and is a committed advocate to growing the operatic canon; she has conducted 17 operatic world premieres, including work by Jake Heggie and Joby Talbot. To top it off, in 2016 she set up the Refugee Orchestra Project, which unites refugee musicians to highlight the important role refugees play in society. She’ll be in the UK, too, making her ENO debut with Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs in April and May 2023. One to watch.

Emmanuel Séjourné – Concerto No 1 for Marimba and Strings, 3rd mvt

Studio Orchestra / Lidiya Yankovskaya cond / Logan Fox mar

LA Opera

The only known surviving American slave autobiography written in Arabic inspires Omar; the opera tells the true story of the West African man who was carried on a slave ship to South Carolina, and who wrote about his experiences in an autobiography in 1831. Its operatic retelling premiered at the Spoleto Festival, and here receives its first outing on the West Coast. Country/blues singer Rhiannon Giddens and film composer Michael Abels wrote the score; Giddens would sit with the banjo or fiddle and work out an entire scene, for Abels to then add harmonies and orchestration.

Giddens is another compelling figure who blurs boundaries; she studied opera at the Oberlin Conservatory, has competed in Scottish traditional music contests, has sung with Tom Jones and Jools Holland, was named one of the 2017 MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellows, and can be seen on YouTube duetting with Yo-Yo Ma.

Charles Aznavour, Yves Stéphane and Marcel Stellman – Tomorrow Is My Turn

Rhiannon Giddens

New Zealand Opera

What’s not to love about a season that presents Verdi’s Macbeth, new opera and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel… on a harbourfront? Add to this the stark and imaginative story behind a world premiere; The Strangest of Angels draws on real-life experiences in a psychiatric hospital, contrasting the calm rationality of a patient with the trauma of a nurse.

This is just a small glimpse into the work of the 21-year-old company. Reaching an audience of 730,000, they have reimagined opera for a New Zealand context by celebrating the nation’s cultural diversity, incorporating Māori and Pasifika traditions. Nowhere is this clearer than Ihitai’Avei’A – Star Navigator, which tells the story of the Tahitian navigator who sailed the Pacific with Captain Cook; Tim Finn has contributed the music and lyrics, with Tahitian monologues from Célestine Hitiura Vaite.

While we’re in New Zealand and the world of theatre, I have to pass one of my favourite lesser-known Kiri Te Kanawa albums your way… Sinuous orchestral lines weave around her silk-toned voice in these classic Cole Porter songs.

Cole Porter – So In Love Am I (Kiss Me, Kate)

Kiri Te Kanawa sop / New World Philharmonic / Peter Matz cond

· The print edition of the full 2022/23 Gramophone Season Preview is on sale from 14 September.

· Jack Pepper is a composer, broadcaster and writer.