In August Peter Oundijan marks his tenth year as Music Director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra by leading them on a European tour. Joining the orchestra on their tour are clarinettist and composer Jörg Widmann and violinist James Ehnes.

The tour starts on 15 August at the Grafenegg Festival in Austria where they are joined by the Festival’s Composer in Residence, Jörg Widmann, to perform repertoire from the composer himself, Weber and Rachmaninov. Widmann joins the orchestra again in their next concert on 19 August at the Rheingau Festival.

On 21 – 22 August the tour moves on to the Helsinki Festival to perform two further concerts. In the first concert the orchestra are joined by Ehnes in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and the second they perform Shostakovich’s Symphony No.11. The tour culminates in Reykjavik on 23 – 24 August with a recital on the first evening at the Harpa Recital Hall featuring a selection of performers from the orchestra and then the final concert of the tour on the following evening.

Since Oundijan joined the orchestra ten years ago, he has increased their touring across North America and they have worked with a range of distinguished guest artists and conductors such as Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Yuja Wang, Barbara Hannigan, Kirill Gerstein, Thomas Dausgaard and Stéphane Denève. A highlight of Oundijan’s time with the orchestra was their founding of the New Creations Festival, which is now one of the leading contemporary festivals in North America.

The orchestra has also created its own record label, TSO Live, and recorded with some of the world’s leading artists, including Martha Argerich, Evgeny Kissin, Jessye Norman, Itzhak Perlman, Christopher Plummer, Mstislav Rostropovich, Arthur Rubinstein and Maxim Vengerov.