With a title like A Season Full of Gusto there is a risk of the kind of cultural marketing that sounds cheerful without saying much. At Symfonieorkest Vlaanderen, however, this slogan proves to align remarkably well with artistic reality. The 2026-2027 season does not look like a collection of loose concerts, but as a well-thought-out musical line in which intensity, lyricism and coherence are central.
Since Martijn Dendievel became chief conductor, the orchestra has been developing an increasingly sharp profile: not through fashionable concepts or abrupt changes of course, but through repertoire choices that consistently feel right and gradually grow into a clear artistic identity. The continuation of the Mendelssohn cycle and the explicit step toward Schumann are not a detail in this, but an aesthetic choice: romanticism as a living language, not as heritage. Emotion is not exaggerated here, but carefully deployed, which gives the music greater significance without effect-seeking.
That line becomes immediately apparent in the opening around Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony, embedded in a broader dramaturgical framework around admiration, inspiration and artistic affinity. Beethoven and Tchaikovsky are placed in dialogue with each other, while pianist Elizabeth Brauss is employed not merely as a soloist but as a substantive voice.
It is striking how the season consistently reframes familiar repertoire without forcing its actualization. Dvořák's Eighth Symphony receives a new perspective alongside Vaughan Williams and Mozart as a reflection on memory and nostalgia, while foreign passages through London, Birmingham and Guildford confirm that the orchestra knows how to carry its artistic story convincingly on the international stage as well.
That dramaturgical care returns in January, when Dendievel opens his Schumann cycle with the Rheinische Symphony. That Dendievel immediately opts for Schumann's broadest and most architectural work reveals an approach without detours: not a cautious build-up, but immediately claiming the full scope of the repertoire. With Cédric Tiberghien in Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto, a clear historical axis between classicism and romanticism is created once again, strengthened by the lead-up to Beethoven year.
Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta is also given a striking context: in collaboration with Robbrecht en Daem architects, light is deployed as a dramaturgical element that deepens the structural tension of the music rather than illustrates it. It is precisely in such choices that the intelligence of the programming shows most sharply.
Perhaps that is the essence of this programming: the absence of nervousness in a cultural sector that often seems obsessed with permanent reinvention. Where other institutions sometimes seek their relevance in conceptual overdrive, this season above all radiates confidence in repertoire, performers and musical continuity.
This is also evident from the solo choices. Victor Julien-Laferrière appears not only as a cellist but also as a conductor in a program that brings together Bach, Saint-Saëns, Mozart and Thierry Escaich, in which virtuosity appears less as a show element than as a form of artistic mediation.
The collaboration with young musicians from the Muziekkapel Koningin Elisabeth also receives a structural place within the orchestral fabric and results in a side-by-side project around Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique, combined with John Adams and a world premiere by Wim Henderickx. In this way, the generational line is not mentioned theoretically, but literally made audible.
The closing choice for Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony is significant in that regard. Not because it closes monumentally, but precisely because it refuses to do so: the season does not end in monumentality, but in movement, lightness and rhythmic breath.
A Season Full of Gusto thus proves to be more than a slogan. It is a programmatic attitude that radiates confidence in repertoire, in musicians and in the slowness of artistic development, creating a coherent artistic line without rigidity. No loud reinvention, but an orchestra that increasingly sharpens its identity step by step and in doing so is precisely convincing.