MUMBAI: At 20, an orchestra is neither a prodigy nor quite a grown-up. It is an age of intent rather than arrival, of appetite sharpened by experience. As the Symphony Orchestra of India (SOI) marks two decades of music-making with a landmark Spring 2026 season at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), the moment feels less like a victory lap and more like a turning of the page.
The celebratory gloss is unmistakable , not least in the return of internationally acclaimed Italian maestro Carlo Rizzi for two concerts, but the deeper intrigue lies with Martyn Brabbins, who debuts this season as chief conductor of the SOI. His two concerts, the NCPA notes, “signal continuity, confidence and a long view.”
For UK-based Brabbins, the word debut comes with an asterisk. He has been a familiar presence in Mumbai for over a decade, returning often to witness “the orchestra’s steady, sometimes hard-won growth and getting a sense of local musical taste.” What has changed, in his view, is not merely the sheen of the playing — though that has sharpened — but the orchestra’s sense of purpose. “There’s been a clear development of ambition and quality,” he notes. “Now the orchestra is 20. That’s not so old in the life of an orchestra. They’re coming into maturity.”
This is not a conductor who arrives trailing rhetorical thunder. His manner on the podium is famously unshowy, his authority earned through clarity rather than flourish. Asked whether this approach requires recalibration in a new cultural context like India, his answer is characteristically plain. “I don’t adapt. I do what I do,” he says, without bravado or apology. “I do it pretty much everywhere. If people like my approach, I’m happy. If they don’t, that’s fine too.”
And yet, within that firmness of method lies an openness of spirit, particularly evident in rehearsals. Working with the SOI, he finds, is “great fun,” precisely because of the musicians’ hunger. “There’s such a passion and willingness to want to do better,” he says. Rehearsals, by his account, are spaces of shared energy — about shaping, listening and nudging the music forward together. The seriousness of purpose never precludes pleasure.
Tradition and modernity
Repertoire, inevitably, becomes the next frontier. Brabbins moves fluently between the symphonic canon and contemporary music, his advocacy for living composers shaped in part by his early training as a composer. “I do believe it’s part of our responsibility to perform new music,” he says, “so that music can then become old music, as time moves on.” Yet his first season with the SOI is marked by restraint rather than provocation. The most modern composer on the stand, for now, is Soviet-Russian Dmitri Shostakovich — hardly radical, but far from safe.
“Shostakovich never played by just one rulebook,” Brabbins explains. “He spliced styles, moods and methods with restless intelligence. One moment biting irony or the grotesque, the next uneasy, double-edged harmonies that never quite settle.” Gustav Mahler’s shadow looms large, filtered through a neoclassical spine, but what remains is tension — music that is always saying more than one thing at once. This, he insists, is neither timidity nor conservatism for its own sake.
Instead, he prefers to call it listening — to context, history and audience. “The audience here is conservative,” Brabbins observes. “Why shouldn’t they be? They haven’t been exposed to anything other than the great classics.” The task is not to shock but to build trust. “Gently, maybe we’ll sneak in something a little more experimental,” he says. “Nobody wants to alienate an audience. The unfamiliar shouldn’t be scary.”
That trust will matter as Brabbins introduces the British music he has long championed. Edward Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten come to mind. The idea, again, is dialogue rather than declaration — a conversation between British orchestral traditions and Indian listening sensibilities, conducted without raised voices or grand gestures.
Evolution over perfection
When Brabbins steps in front of an orchestra as chief conductor, what does he listen for most keenly? Not perfection, but evolution. He speaks of the orchestra as a “musical organism”. Change, when it comes, should feel organic. “I don’t want to impose radical changes,” he says. “Any change should be a natural evolution.”
That philosophy extends to questions of identity. The SOI, he acknowledges, already has a distinct personality. His task is not to overwrite it, but to allow it room to breathe and subtly shift. “Every conductor makes an orchestra sound different,” he says. “Personality is never fixed. There’s always a chance for it to change.”
In an age of orchestral spectacle and instant impact, Martyn Brabbins offers Mumbai something rare: patience, trust and the long view. At 20, the SOI could scarcely ask for a steadier hand for the road ahead.
(SOI Spring 2026 Season concerts @NCPA
February 7, 7pm: Beethoven and Holst.
February 12, 70m: 12 February 7pm
Mendelssohn, Mahler and Shostakovich.)