Highlights for Mitsuko Uchida during the next few months include a Beethoven Concerto cycle with Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic throughout the month of February. Uchida will then turn her focus to Mozart, visiting both Chicago Symphony and the Cleveland Orchestra, to direct concerti from the keyboard.

A busy few months for Joseph Swensen, he welcomed in the New Year with concerts with the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse and the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris. He conducted the Netherlands première of his recent work, Concertante for Horn and Orchestra (The Fire and the Rose),with the Orkest van het Oosten in Enschede and as Principal Guest Conductor and Artistic Advisor with the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Swensen conducted concerts in Paris and at the Folles Journées de Nantes festival. Swensen also worked with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and will prepare a production of Les Dialogues des Carmelites for Malmö Opera, which opens on 27 February, followed by Rosenkavalier in May.

During the next few months, Antonello Manacorda will regularly conduct the Pomeriggi Musicali orchestra in Milan (where he is Musical Director); highlights include the interpretation of all of Beethoven’s symphonies in June 2010. In March Manacorda will conduct the Kammerakademie Potsdam and in April will return to Aldbeburgh for the third year in succession to conduct the Britten-Pears Orchestra. In May he will conduct Don Giovanni at Teatro La Fenice.

During the next few months, Polina Leschenko will be performing both of Chopin’s piano concerti. This month she made her début with the Bern Symphony Orchestra and Antoni Wit with Piano Concerto No1. She will then make a welcome return to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (with Joseph Swensen) and the Hallé Orchestra (with Sir Mark Elder), performing No2. Leschenko then goes into the recording studio to record a Dvorak chamber music disc on the Avanticlassic label, with Priya Mitchell, Alexander Sitkovetsky, Maxim Rysanov and Natalie Clein. The disc will be released this autumn.

2090 ended successfully for Llŷr Williams when he made his debut with the London Philharmonic and Saraste playing Beethoven’s fifth Piano Concerto. He has a busy and exciting schedule at the beginning of 2010. Highlights include a Beethoven Sonata cycle at Perth Concert Hall, Galeri Caernarfon and Theatr Harlech; his debut in Japan in February in Tokyo’s Musashino Civic Cultural Hall where he will perform works by Schubert, Debussy and Mussorgsky and in June he returns to BBC National Orchestra of Wales to play the Schoenberg Piano Concerto.

Bach takes up his new appointment as the General Musical Director of Das Meininger Theater on 1 December 2010 and his first production will be Wagner’s opera Rienzi. Highlights for the coming period include a production of Thomas Adès’s opera, The Tempest, currently enjoying its German premiere in Frankfurt. Bach’s performances at Theater Lübeck will be the first production in Germany following the première in Frankfurt.