From the Salzburg Festival to Warsaw, Merano and Hamburg, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Manfred Honeck have spent the first half of their 2026 European Tour performing in some of Europe’s most celebrated concert halls, earning enthusiastic reviews along the way.
Critics across Europe are praising the Pittsburgh Symphony
Following the Orchestra’s performances in Warsaw, one critic wrote that the Pittsburgh Symphony “showed why it belongs among the world’s renowned ensembles,” praising Honeck for giving the musicians “enormous freedom while retaining complete command over the shape and direction of the performance.”
In Merano, DOLOMITEN simply called the Pittsburgh Symphony “one of the world’s finest orchestras.”
At the Salzburg Festival, KULTURA-EXTRA praised the extraordinary range of the Orchestra’s sound:
Powerful strings, brilliant brass, characterful woodwinds — but above all, the ability to descend from monumental volume to almost physically palpable silence within just a few bars.
KULTURA-EXTRA
And Salzburger Nachrichten singled out Honeck’s interpretation for its “extraordinary clarity,” describing a performance filled with contrasting shades of “defiance,” “resignation” and “delicate transcendence.”
A Pittsburgh sound heard around the world
The Orchestra’s distinctive sound has been a recurring theme in the reviews.
Following a performance in Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, Hamburger Abendblatt praised Principal Horn William Caballero’s “assurance and glowing tone” and wrote that the PSO’s strings sounded “as though cut from a single piece of cloth.”
Another review, from Classical Record Library in Warsaw, went even further, calling the PSO “an absolutely top-tier ensemble” and suggesting that the traditional American orchestral “Big Five” need to become a “Big Six,” with particular admiration for the Orchestra’s brass section.
The acclaim comes during a tour that continues the Pittsburgh Symphony’s longstanding role as a cultural ambassador for Pittsburgh, bringing the Orchestra to major festivals and concert halls across Italy, Austria, Poland, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands.
Memorable nights in Hamburg
One of the tour’s major milestones came September 1, when the Pittsburgh Symphony opened the 10th-anniversary season of Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, one of Europe’s most renowned concert halls.
The concert was livestreamed internationally and remains available to watch online, giving audiences at home the chance to experience the Orchestra on tour.
More to come
The second half of the tour begins at the Lucerne Festival, where the Pittsburgh Symphony reunites with violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter in a particularly meaningful appearance: 2026 marks 50 years since Mutter made her public debut in Lucerne.
From there, the Orchestra travels to Cologne, Amsterdam and Essen, before concluding the tour with two concerts at the Vienna Konzerthaus on September 9 and 10. The PSO will open the regular concert season at several of these major European venues, including Cologne’s Philharmonie, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Essen’s Philharmonie and the Vienna Konzerthaus.
Alongside the performances, the tour is also carrying Pittsburgh’s story beyond the concert hall. Business exchange events in Amsterdam, Essen and Vienna are bringing together the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance, BusinessPA and European partners under the theme “Where Innovation Meets Culture,” using the Orchestra’s international presence to help build connections between Western Pennsylvania and Europe.