Britain’s Edward Gardner holds out his high hopes for a U.S. podium post

Edward Gardner makes no bones about the future. After the English maestro steps down in 2028 as chief conductor and artistic adviser of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, he will be in search of another symphonic post, and he’d love it to be in the United States.

“If the relationship is right, I would be looking for it,” Gardner said. “I’m enjoying more and more coming to the States in terms of the music-making. I’m really open to any possibility.”

He will soon be returning to the United States for his latest set of concerts May 7-9 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, followed by his May 15 and 17 debut with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

Gardner, 51, is becoming something of a regular guest conductor with the CSO, now appearing approximately every other season with the ensemble. “I love it,” he said. “They are such a virtuosic group of people.”

He had particular praise for the CSO’s performances of the Symphony No. 5 in D Major (1938-43) by Ralph Vaughan Williams that he led in November 2022 as part of the international celebration of the 150th anniversary of the English composer’s birth.

“It was a God-given beauty they performed it with,” he said. “I was so impressed. That was a new kind of range of the orchestra that I experienced for the first time.”

For his reunion with the orchestra in May, he has planned one of the season’s more creative and off-beat programs. “You know, they talk about forests being connected by these webs of mushroom roots underneath, and it’s that sort of program,” he said. “Those are the sort I like if the audience is engaged enough to come to it, and I’m sure they will.”

The first half of the program features the orchestra’s first-ever performances of Samuel Barber’s eight-minute First Essay for Orchestra, Op. 12, and William Walton’s Symphony No. 1 in B-Flat Minor (the CSO last performed the latter in October 2013). The two works were both composed in the 1930s — the former in 1938 and the latter in 1932-35.

Gardner’s only complaint about Barber’s piece is its hum-drum title. “It’s a gorgeous, emotionally connected, Mahlerian statement of anxiety and wistfulness in the great American composition tradition,” he said. “Essay for Orchestra is terrible. Am I allowed to rename it? It sounds so academic, and there is nothing academic about it all.”

Walton’s symphony, which found immediate favor following its premiere by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, is one of two works by the composer in the form. He took an eight-month break from the work after composing its first three movements to write a film score, finally completing the First in August 1935.

Of  William Walton’s First Symphony, “I find that the finale is quite influenced by America. He wrote it a year later, and it feels like it could come from Hollywood in some ways.” — Edward Gardner

“The symphony, it’s not a linear journey,” Gardner said. “I think it will suit the orchestra unbelievably — that sort of Beethovenian, strident first movement, a snarling scherzo and right [on] through. I find that the finale is quite influenced by America. He wrote it a year later, and it feels like it could come from Hollywood in some ways.”

He believes the two 1930s works share certain qualities, especially feelings of wistfulness, which can be heard to advantage in the third movement of Walton’s Symphony, which is marked “Andante con malinconia (at a moderate pace, with melancholy).”

The second half is devoted to the Neruda Songs by American composer Peter Lieberson (1946-2011). He wrote the love songs for his wife, famed mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who performed them only a few times before dying the following year after a relapse of cancer.

The intimate works are settings of love sonnets by Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Gardner believes the songs with their “Mahlerian textures so soulful and felt” have connections to both of the program’s other works, especially Barber’s First Essay for Orchestra.

Featured as soloist will be mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, as she makes her second set of appearances with the CSO as the ensemble’s 2025-26 artist-in-residence. The two worked together previously, presenting performances of Hector Berlioz’s scène lyrique, La Mort de Cléopâtre (The Death of Cleopatra), first in London in September 2024 with the London Philharmonic and then in May 2025 with the Norwegian National Opera Orchestra.

“There are these mezzo-sopranos every generation who just speak absolutely from their soul — Janet Baker and Kathleen Ferrier for me,” he said. “Lorraine had the same thing, and Joyce has it as well.”

Gardner felt that it made sense to end his time with the London Philharmonic after seven years, because of the high-pressure schedule of performances, recordings and tours that the position demands. “The work is so intense that it [seven years] actually feels like a beautiful length of tenure,” he said.

He will continue as music director of the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, a post he assumed in 2024 after having been artistic adviser the two previous years. His first time on the podium in that role was a production that summer of The Flying Dutchman with Lise Davidsen, one of the top Wagnerian sopranos of our time, and baritone Gerald Finley. A live recording was released on Decca Classics in April 2025.

“That was obviously a big message to the general opera world that we mean business,” he said.

The company performs in the angular Oslo Opera House, which was designed by Snøhetta, an international architectural firm founded in the city. “Alongside Munich, it’s possibly the greatest opera acoustic that I’ve ever experienced,” Gardner said. “It has 1,300 seats. That means the orchestra can play properly, the singers get projected really beautifully, and the sound has a gorgeous bloom on it.”

It has always been important to Gardner to have both an operatic and symphonic conducting position at the same time, so he can maintain a balance between the two pursuits in his career. His earlier such posts include music director of the English National Opera in 2007-15 and principal guest conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in 2010-16.

“It’s like two different careers, basically, and I try do both, which is probably slightly mad,” he said. “I need both of them in my life. Having two jobs is a lot. You’ve got to invest an enormous amount of energy and time, but the rewards for being able to shape the future, the vision, the seasons of an opera company and a symphony orchestra mean that it’s a massive privilege to be in that position.”

As he looks toward an orchestral conducting post after leading the London Philharmonic, finding the right fit with the right orchestra will be the challenge. Certainly, Gardner has the resume, not to mention the respect of many singers and musicians both in Europe and the United States. As the Washington Classical Review recently observed, Gardner’s concerts “always reward the listener with electrifying performances and unusual repertoire.”