For its newly launched 2023-24 season the RSNO is addressing the multiple preferences of today’s concert-going public, says chief executive Alistair Mackie. “We’re trying to blur some of the lines between our classical core and our film and pops offerings.” Sure enough, the main Glasgow and Edinburgh seasons are an amalgam that draw together distinctive sub-categories: Classical Concerts, RSNO at the Movies, Pops, Family Concerts, and traditional Festive Classics.

“It’s also an attempt to build our audiences across the divides,” he claims. “We’re looking at price structures that cut across categories. Data shows that each attracts a distinctive market. The big battle at the moment within the whole orchestral industry is to cross-fertilise these audience sectors. We’re looking at pricing structures that make that easier and more attractive.”

So what’s in the mix? The core classical season isn’t short of imposing spectacle, opening with Beethoven and Richard Strauss – the latter’s lofty Ein Heldenleben – under music director Thomas Søndergård, who also undertakes the jaw-dropping season finale, Berlioz’s Grand Messe, with its epic requirements for extended orchestra and chorus, four brass bands and soloists. “Our partnership with the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland allows us to put on something as extravagant as that without scaring the finance director,” Mackie explains.

The RSNO and Thomas Søndergård PIC: Sally Jubb

Søndergård, whose current contract has just been extended to 2025, conducts eight programmes in all, including a new Violin Concerto by Errolyn Wallen co-commissioned by the RSNO, and two of Saint-Saëns’ piano concertos with soloist Simon Trpčeski, also being recorded for Linn Records. Guest conductors include German-born David Afkham (collaborating with Nicola Benedetti in Mark Simpson’s Violin Concerto) and James MacMillan directing his own Christmas Oratorio, hailed a modern masterpiece after its Amsterdam premiere two years ago.

In another imaginative partnership, the orchestra teams up with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra for a lighter American mix, including Tommy Smith’s extended arrangement of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

Besides featuring a live screening of Jurassic Park, the film music series celebrates Lanarkshire-born Hollywood composer Patrick Doyle, with star appearances by Peter Capaldi and Richard E Grant. The shorter Pops series includes radio veteran Ken Bruce presenting his own “Chart Hits” and an evening of Video Games Music under Irish conductor/composer Eimear Noone. “The Ken Bruce event will be a very different experience for the RSNO, playing Britpop arrangements especially orchestrated for us,” says Mackie.

For families, the partnership with Children’s Classic Concerts continues, and Festival Classics includes the traditional Christmas/New Year presentations.

Then there’s the ongoing development in Glasgow of the smaller New Auditorium, part of the RSNO’s rehearsal and administrative base within the city’s Royal Concert Hall. “We’ve already had great success in developing our subsidiary film studio work there, with recent projects for Disney and future ones scheduled with Universal and Sony, but we’re also keen to increase our curatorial role in the smaller hall,” Mackie explains.

That’s where much of the new partnership activity takes place, already underway this year with the Hebrides Ensemble and Dunedin Consort. “Dunedin are back next season, performing with our own players in Heiner Goebbels’ theatrical Songs of War I’ve Seen,” Mackie enthuses. It also goes to Edinburgh and Perth. Notable among the six-concert Sunday Chamber Series is the versatile Trpčeski in another guise with his hand-picked folk band of fellow Macedonians.

Such expanded activity has allowed Mackie to transfer the New Auditorium matinee concerts to wider communities. “We’re going to Kilmarnock, Lanark, Hamilton, Greenock, Ayr and Motherwell, where the audiences will be a 50/50 mix of school kids and paying public. I like the cross-generational thing and the impact that should have on building new support for our main concerts,” he says.

And it’s critical in ensuring the RSNO’s long-term viability, he adds. “There’s been an unquestionable shift away from traditional subscription models, especially since Covid, with more young people taking an interest in what we do. The old concept of folk deciding in April ’23 what you’re going to be doing in June ’24 has diminished. It’s a positive development and we have to react to it.”

For full details of the RSNO’s 2023-24 Season, see www.rsno.org.uk

'We're trying to blur some of the lines' - RSNO announces genre-fluid new season