The 2025–26 season marks Hope’s ninth as music director of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra (ZCO). To kick off the new season, he leads the conductor-less ensemble from the violin in an opening night concert in the Tonhalle Zurich. After favorites for strings by Vaughan Williams and Respighi, principal cellist Nicola Mosca joins them as harp soloist in both Debussy’s Danses sacrée et profane and Bernstein’s Serenade after Plato’s “Symposium” (Sep 30).

At Germany’s Frauenkirche Dresden, where his tenure has been extended through 2031, Hope and the orchestra give a holiday program of traditional Christmas carols and works by Mendelssohn, Weill, and Cole Porter. This performance features baritone Thomas Hampson (Dec 3), with whom they reunite in Lucerne for a pair of festive, all-American New Year’s Eve concerts (Dec 31 & Jan 1).

Back in Zurich, Hope is the soloist in concertos by Mozart and Bologne, alongside Haydn and Mozart symphonies and the “Dance of the Furies” from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (Jan 27). He and the orchestra subsequently embark on an extensive and high-profile German tour. Their classical program is the vehicle for performances in Berlin (Feb 3), Cologne (Feb 4), Hannover (Feb 6), Frankfurt (Feb 7), Hamburg (Feb 9 & 10), and Stuttgart (Feb 14), while all-American evenings of Price, Copland, Gershwin, Weill, Ellington, and Bernstein take them to Freiburg (Feb 12), Mannheim (Feb 13), and Munich (Feb 15). Hope and the ZCO conclude their season together at the Tonhalle where, alongside works by Elgar and Virgil Thomson, he is the soloist in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (June 4).