The last time I heard Valery Gergiev conduct his expert Mariinsky Orchestra was at the opening concert of the Beethovenfest in Bonn a few weekends ago, ending with an amazingly fresh account of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.

These glamorous Russians visit Symphony Hall on October 12, and their programme begins with none other than Rimsky-Korsakov, this time his exotic suite from his opera The Golden Cockerel. It concludes with Rachmaninov’s gripping Symphonic Dances, and sandwiched between these two offerings is Prokofiev’s finger-crunching Piano Concerto no.2.

I once saw a pianist break one of the instrument’s strings in a performance of this fearsome work at Symphony Hall. He smilingly pocketed the offending thread of lethal metal and continued on his way.

Soloist in Thursday’s performance is Denis Matsuev, and there is an impressive roster of pianists following on during the next few months at Symphony Hall and Birmingham Town Hall.

Among them is Dame Mitsuko Uchida, who gives an all-Schubert recital in Birmingham Town Hall on October 30, and on November 6 the venue hosts a previously-postponed visit from the legendary Portuguese pianist Maria Joao Pires performing sonatas by Mozart and Schubert, ending with that composer’s ineffable posthumous B-flat masterpiece, D960.

Birmingham Town Hall receives a visit on November 18 from one of the most thoughtful of pianists, Sir Andras Schiff, whose programme includes works by Brahms and Bach, and which begins with the Fantasy in F-sharp minor by Mendelssohn - who will doubtless be smiling down on Schiff from the Town Hall organ-loft whose installation the great composer supervised in the late 1830s.

A week later (November 25) Symphony Hall hosts one of the world’s current hottest-property pianists, Igor Levit performing Beethoven’s poetic Piano Concerto no.4 with the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hanover. Andrew Manze (violinist-poacher turned conductor-gamekeeper) opens his programme with Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, and concludes with Brahms’ sunny Second Symphony.

Igor Levit returns to Birmingham on July 19, when his recital at Symphony Hall includes various arrangements for piano (Brahms’ left-hand transcription of the famous Bach Chaconne, Liszt’s arrangement of the Parsifal Holy Grail march by his son-in-law Wagner, and Busoni’s arrangement of Liszt’s great organ fantasy and fugue Ad nos, ad salutarem), as well as a selection of Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes, and the absorbing Sonata by Alban Berg.

Mitsuko Uchida, who is performing at Symphony Hall
Mitsuko Uchida, who is performing at Symphony Hall

And after Christmas Birmingham Town Hall welcomes another of the world’s most renowned pianists, when Pierre-Laurent Aimard joins the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (conducted by none other than the CBSO’s much-loved music director Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla) for a concert entirely devoted to the legendary American composer Elliott Carter (January 28).

Carter died well into his second century of life, and I remember his 100th birthday concert with BCMG at the Snape Maltings as part of the Aldeburgh Festival, with Elspeth Dutch soloist in his Horn Concerto as the highlight of a memorable evening.

But around the same time at the turn of the New Year, string-players take over the limelight, beginning on January 23 when Joshua Bell is director/soloist with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in Vivaldi’s much-loved Four Seasons.

A couple of weeks later (February 6) Nicola Benedetti, this season’s THSH Artist-in-Residence, plays the world’s greatest violin concerto with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. The other Beethoven work in conductor Marin Alsop’s programme is the enigmatic Fourth Symphony. Exactly a month after this concert, Benedetti appears in the Town Hall giving a solo performance in the round, her programme including the awesome Bach D minor Partita (with its monumental Chaconne) and a new work by Wynton Marsalis (March 6).

Moving down a couple of notches in the string family, the highly-acclaimed cellist Alisa Weilerstein is soloist in yet again the world’s greatest concerto for her particular instrument (this time the Dvorak), joined by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. The programme begins with Mozart’s Don Giovanni Overture (lovingly and gratefully composed for Prague), and ends with Dvotak’s New World Symphony (Symphony Hall February 14).

We began with a mention of one of the world’s great orchestras under one of the world’s great conductors. Towards the end of the current season another great orchestra brings its newly-appointed principal (and great) conductor to Symphony Hall on May 1, when the London Symphony Orchestra is led by Sir Simon Rattle in Mahler’s Ninth Symphony.

That opening mention also referred to Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. On April 25 the engaging Simon Trpceski gives us the chance to hear a rare solo piano transcription of that orchestral showpiece in a Town Hall recital which will also bring yet another great pianist face-to-face with Mendelssohn, whose spirit is resident in this magnificent building, this time in a selection of his Songs without Words.

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