Home ground Bridgewater Hall, Manchester Changes at the top None. Mark Elder continues his revitalising reign.
Strengths Not since the days of Barbirolli has Manchester enjoyed such a powerful combination of inspirational maestro and fired-up orchestra. Aided by Lyn Fletcher, the Hallé’s exceptional leader, Elder has turned the Hallé into a passionate yet well-drilled outfit, as capable of delivering sumptuous Elgar as of snarling sardonically through Shostakovich.
Weaknesses Superb concerts are sometimes played to half-full houses of middle-aged punters in a city packed with students. Why don’t they hand out unsold tickets in the college bars?
Season highlights With typical panache a Bach Brandenburg concerto is paired with Mahler’s tumultuous Fifth Symphony in the season’s first concert (Sept 28). And don’t miss the celebrations next June, when Elder marks his 60th birthday and Elgar’s 150th.
2 LONDON SYMPHONY
Home ground Barbican Changes at the top Huge upheaval as urbane Sir Colin Davis gives way to the volcanic Valery Gergiev.
Strengths Quality players throughout the band, a glitzy international profile, lashings of panache, financial backing from the Corporation of London, pioneering work in education, and a visionary management style nurtured by Sir Clive Gillinson and continued by his successor Kathryn McDowell.
Weaknesses Favoured soloists and conductors — Rostropovich, Boulez, Mutter, Davis himself — tend to recycle the same old repertoire. Fresh thinking urgently needed; Daniel Harding’s arrival as principal guest conductor will help. But Gergiev’s reputation for doing eight shows a week on minimum rehearsal may plunge the LSO back into bad old habits painstakingly eradicated during the Gillinson years.
Season highlights Gergiev’s first stint as principal conductor includes lots of rarely played Russian music (Jan to Jun). And Mozart piano concertos are explored throughout the season by stellar soloists.
3 NORTHERN SINFONIA
Home ground Sage, Gateshead Changes at the top None. Thomas Zehetmair continues his stylish direction, often from the violin.
Strengths With its breathtaking Foster architecture, revolutionary intermingling of educational, community and professional music-making, and passionate support from Gateshead Council, the Sage has quickly become the most exciting music venue in Britain — and the Northern Sinfonia has raised its game to match its new home.
Weaknesses Repertoire is heavily geared toward mid-scale 18th and 19th-century pieces — the odd bit of Thomas Adès, Gerald Barry and Ligeti notwithstanding. Apart from Zehetmair, conductors tend to be fledgelings or also-rans.
Season highlights Zehetmair’s Schumann symphony cycle should be stimulating (Dec), and Adès conducts a bracing night of Stravinsky, Dallapiccola, and his own music (May 10).
4 BBC SYMPHONY
Home ground Barbican Changes at the top Czech maestro Jirí Belohlávek took over this summer.
Strengths Cushioned by licence-fee subsidy, bold programmes and festivals can be risked and properly rehearsed. Concerts are always well prepared, and the arrival of Belohlávek — replacing Leonard Slatkin, who never enthused the players — should add special authority to 19th-century and Czech repertoire.
Weaknesses Not a band regularly prepared to give 110 per cent, or to express much personality. Perhaps the prospect of a pension and steady salary attracts a certain sort of play-safe musicians.
Season highlights A dozen premieres, including new works by Jonathan Dove (Sept 29), Michael Nyman (Mar 8), Julian Anderson (May 12) and Sir John Tavener (Jun 19),plus Belohlávek conductinga concert staging of Janácek’s Excursions of Mr Broucek.
5 PHILHARMONIA
Home ground Queen Elizabeth Hall, London Changes at the top None. Christoph von Dohnányi labours on.
Strengths A serious, high-quality orchestra, astutely managed by the combative and canny David Whelton. Won a lot of friends round the regions by extending its touring during the Festival Hall closure. Big, loyal following in London, headed by the Prince of Wales. Impressive interactive website, with 23 million hits in a year, and plans to make all live concerts available for downloading.
Weaknesses These days Dohnányi rarely seems to enthuse players, audiences, critics or even himself. A new principal conductor is long overdue. Whelton’s relationship with the South Bank Centre is famously not all sweetness and light. And one more morale-sapping, sonically-stunted season still has to be endured in the tatty Queen Elizabeth Hall.
Season highlights A semi-staged Death in Venice with the peerless Philip Langridge as the desiccated Aschenbach (Nov 23, 24); Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting all the Mahler song-cycles (Dec); Riccardo Muti conducting Verdi Requiem (Westminster Cathedral, Mar 14), then all eyes on June 2007 when the Festival Hall reopens.
6 BBC PHILHARMONIC
Home Ground Bridgewater Hall, Manchester Changes at the top None. Italian maestro Gianandrea Noseda launches his fifth season in Manchester.
Strengths The BBC Phil’s Shostakovich festival, in collaboration with the Hallé, was the orchestral highlight of last season. And its extraordinary success with its Beethoven symphonies “download” has made it one of the most famous orchestras in the world.
Weaknesses Noseda’s whippy, hyperactive conducting doesn’t suit every work, or appeal to all tastes.
Season’s highlights Mahler’s neurotic Tenth Symphony should suit the Italian down to the ground (Sept 30). There’s a fabulous concert on May 5 when four top cellists play four different cello concertos.
7 LONDON PHILHARMONIC
Home ground Queen Elizabeth Hall Changes at the top Brilliant, glamorous Vladimir Jurowski will replace musty Kurt Masur as top baton, but sadly not till next season.
Strengths When Jurowski is at the helm (for example, at Glyndebourne) the band is transformed, and it begins to sound like the majestic ensemble that dominated London music-making during the Haitink, Solti and Tennstedt years. Its programmes at the Queen Elizabeth Hall have been enterprisingly tailored to fit the reduced space. And it seems to have a much more productive relationship with the South Bank Centre than does the Philharmonia, the venue’s other resident symphony orchestra.
Weaknesses The 79-year-old Masur hardly figures, and the playing standards under other batons can be alarmingly variable. An awful lot of conductors in the coming season are complete unknowns, at least in London.
Season’s highlights Anything conducted by Jurowski or Marin Alsop should be worthwhile. Masur’s performance of Brahms’s Requiem in St Paul’s (Oct 13) will appeal to those who like choral music in grandiose splurges.
8 CITY OF BIRMINGHAM SYMPHONY
Home Ground Symphony Hall, Birmingham Changes Sakari Oramo steps down as principal conductor after ten years, but not until 2008.
Strengths Remains a lively, responsive band, turning out adventurous programmes in the style of the Rattle years, despite some financial problems. A fabulous chorus and youth chorus give the orchestra an extra dimension when it comes to repertoire.
Weaknesses Oramo’s magic has worn thin lately, and some guest conductors have been unimpressive. But the big problem is the Birmingham audience, largely unchanged since the Rattle era, but 15 years older. There’s no buzz around Symphony Hall any more.
Season’s highlights An early cracker will be Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto (with Janine Jansen), coupled with Oramo doing Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony (Sept 20, 21). There’s a great Stravinsky double-bill conducted by Oramo and Adès (Oct 28), and lots of Elgar in his 150th year.
9 BOURNEMOUTH SYMPHONY
Home ground Lighthouse, Poole, Dorset Changes None. Marin Alsop, the only woman principal conductor of a major British or American orchestra, continues her successful reign.
Strengths She is an exhilarating presence, as assured when talking to audiences as with the baton. And the orchestra is a crucial pillar of musical life in the South West.
Weaknesses The Poole Lighthouse has dreadful, boxy acoustics. The orchestra is sometimes overstretched by the technical demands of the most demanding Romantic repertoire. And Alsop’s new commitments in Baltimore may take precedence.
Season’s highlights Alsop conducts two terrific Bartók programmes including The Wooden Prince (May 9) and a semi-staged Duke Bluebeard’s Castle (May 16)
10 ROYAL SCOTTISH NATIONAL
Home grounds Usher Hall, Edinburgh; Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow Changes None. Personable young Frenchman Stéphane Denève is in his second season as music director.
Strengths After years of under-achievement, the RSNO seems better motivated under the 34-year-old Denève, whose personality is as flamboyant as his bouffant of brown curls. More accessible prices and new rush-hour concerts suggest that the management has also had a wake-up call.
Weaknesses Still hundreds of empty seats when the orchestra plays outside Glasgow and Edinburgh, and sometimes inside, too. And Denève’s easygoing Gallic charm doesn’t always produce precision playing.
Season’s highlights Tremendous conjunction of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony with exciting contemporary piece to open the season (Sept 29, 30).
Other contenders
The indefatigable Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, reduced to a shoestring subsidy, battles on in Cadogan Hall and the Royal Albert Hall. On good days it still plays sumptuously, especially under Daniele Gatti. Its good days should include Sept 15 when, exactly 60 years after Sir Thomas Beecham founded the band, Gatti conducts Mahler’s vast Eighth Symphony in the Albert Hall. Could the RPO rise again? If true grit counts for anything, it can and should.
But the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic is a better bet for swift promotion under its new young Russian conductor, Vasily Petrenko. In four scintillating September programmes at Philharmonic Hall (14, 20/21, 27, 30) he offers a dazzling parade of Russian firecrackers.
Less is expected, sadly, of Thierry Fischer’s appointment as top baton (succeeding Richard Hickox) at the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. The Swiss conductor hasn’t exactly set pulses racing elsewhere. But he will never have a better chance to thrill than with Messiaen’s vast and exotic Turangalîla Symphony in his opening concert (Oct 7, St David’s Hall, Cardiff).
Who’s left? The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra doesn’t get anything like the promotional support (or the audiences) that its adventurous programmes deserve.
And then there’s the Ulster Orchestra. Minus a principal conductor and, temporarily from April, its beloved Ulster Hall, kept alive on the most precarious of public subsidies, the Belfast band has been the Cinderella of the British orchestral scene for some years, and doesn’t seem ready to go to the ball yet.
