The 2008-2009 season is conductor Andreas Delfs' second with the Honolulu Symphony, which means it is the first in which the programming is wholly his own. In short, this is the year Honolulu learns what its symphony will be under Delfs' leadership.

"We're in a period of rebuilding our audience," Delfs explained last spring when announcing the new season, "and I am very interested in experimenting with a program format that will appeal to larger numbers of people."

Delfs is in good company: classical orchestras everywhere are in a constant state of experimenting with formats, programs and genres with an eye to building their audiences. Some focus on commissioning contemporary works; others on multimedia programs, as the Honolulu Symphony did several years ago; and still others on popular genres, as in the Honolulu Pops series.

In choosing "pieces that remind you of the power and glory of music," Delfs is relying — perhaps inevitably, given his goal — on acclaimed masterworks, each program carefully balanced around a theme or focus piece.

It is a conservative format, safe, tried and true.

In fact, at first glance, the season reads rather like a primer in Western classics: an all-Brahms opener, a Beethoven festival, an American composers concert, an evening of the Strausses, Orff's "Carmina Burana," and more than a few all-Russian programs.

There is one new work — Michael Giacchino's "Ratatouille: Suite and Savory," a reworking of music from the film — and a handful of 20th-century works, but otherwise no contemporary classical.

Among regular concert goers, Delfs' programming has triggered a flurry of reactions, most of which, both pro and con, echo similar reactions to similar programs elsewhere.

It is easy to complain about "trotting out the old warhorses" or the dearth of contemporary classical works and how our orchestras are becoming museums. It is also easy to champion the classics and complain about boring and offensive contemporary works.

As happens so often in life, both sides have strong arguments.

On the one hand, many contemporary classical composers in the 20th century became so wrapped up in "composing for posterity" that they ignored their audiences with appalling self-importance — and then had the gall to suggest that audiences who did not like the music "just didn't understand." Audiences responded by avoiding contemporary music and embracing history almost to the exclusion of the present.

On the other hand, no genre can survive forever on a finite repertoire, and orchestras that hew too closely to the masterworks do become museums, eddies out of the main stream of music and culture.

The tension between these two sides permeates the classical music world and plays out in its audiences.

Classical audiences are like rivers: the people change, but the makeup remains pretty much the same. A hundred years ago, orchestras were fretting because the average age of their audience was over 55 — as it is today.

Every audience is a mix of newcomers and learned listeners, and although everyone follows a similar learning trajectory, their needs are different at different points. Thus it is that the poor artistic director who programs Brahms' Symphony No. 4 hears not only, "Who's this Brahms guy?" but also "Oh, I love Brahms!" and "Brahms' Fourth again?"

Classical concerts cast their nets over centuries and myriad styles. For an analogy, imagine a jazz program that includes ragtime, big band, fusion, bop and blues — all in the same concert, performed by the same musicians. No jazz group in their right minds would even consider it. And yet, orchestras toss Bach and Stravinsky into the same program and expect the Bachophiles to embrace Stravinsky, and the Stravinsky-ites to love Bach.

In their programming, conductors and artistic directors alternate experimenting and returning to basics, catering first to one side and then the other, while everyone worries about audience numbers and where classical music is headed.

For decades, the music world has been agonizing over whether classical music is "dying" — but it has, after all, been decades and the music has outlived a whole lot of worriers.

Surely, people living in the year 2525 will have an entirely different repertoire, perhaps even a different concept of "classical music," because everything that survives, changes. The interesting question is not whether classical music will survive, but how: How is it changing, evolving, participating in our culture?

There are fascinating influences out there tugging on our understanding of classical music: art musics of other countries, international grand musicals, jazz genres, popular genres, and of course, film music, such as the suite from "Ratatouille" slated for this December.

Delfs' program formats may be familiar, as are almost all the composers he included, but those who look closely will also see a fair number of lesser-known works: Rimsky-Korsakov's "Tale of the Tsar Saltan"; Kodaly's "Dances of Marosszek"; Adams' "Slonimsky's Earbox"; Mussorgsky's Prelude to "Khvantchina"; and probably for the first time in Honolulu, Maazel's "(Wagner's) Ring Without Words."

For newcomers, this season offers an opportunity to become familiar with some of the greatest works ever composed. There are few pieces in history that can approach these, whether in range of expression, subtlety of nuance, or in what Delfs called their "power and glory."

For learned listeners, this will be a time to discover several new "old gems," to revisit favorites and, hopefully, to hear all of them created anew in live performance.