The NHK Symphony Orchestra will welcome many of the world's finest conductors in its 2010/11 season to present concerts which are sure to become deeply engraved in the minds of the audiences. Conductors to step onto our podium are Charles Dutoit, Music Director Emeritus, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Conductor Laureate, André Previn, Principal Guest Conductor, and Tadaaki Otaka, who assumed the position of Permanent Conductor of the NHK Symphony Orchestra in January 2010, along with guest conducting veterans including Neville Marriner, Nello Santi, Myung-Whun Chung, Roger Norrington, Helmuth Rilling, who will conduct Beethoven's 9th Symphony, as well as other fine conductors drawing world attention including Markus Stenz, Vasily Petrenko, Ion Marin, Jonathan Nott, and Alexander Vedernikov. Let me introduce you to our series lineup.

In the Mahler series which we started last season to mark the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth, the NHK Symphony will take up Symphony No.2 Auferstehung in November, Symphony No.3 in February, and Symphony No.1 Titan in April. Roger Norrington, who made a sensational debut with the NHK Symphony Orchestra in the November 2006 subscription concert series, will kick off his Beethoven series in April.

In October, popular conductor Nello Santi will lead the NSO with Verdi's Aida in concert style, while Charles Dutoit's War Requiem, a work Britten composed and dedicated to the war dead and to world peace, will surely become a favorite topic among music lovers.

Schumann and Chopin are both anniversary composers in 2010, whose bicentenary of birth will be celebrated. Schumann's program by Neville Marriner in September, and Charles Dutoit's Chopin in December, for which he will work with the winner of the 16th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition to be held this autumn, will surely delight the audiences.

A gorgeous lineup of soloists include seasoned pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, promising young pianists Antti Siirala, Martin Helmchen, and Simon Trpčeski, as well as up-and-coming violinists Mikhail Simonyan, Veronika Eberle, Julian Rachlin, and Mayuko Kamio, Japan's own world-class cellist Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, and British cellist Steven Isserlis, known for his original ideas and firm convictions. Among the many fine singers to appear with the NSO are Dietrich Henschel, a baritone often viewed as the successor to the great Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and Mihoko Fujimura, a world-class mezzo soprano of whom Japan is very proud.

I hope you will enjoy the 2010/11 season of the NHK Symphony Orchestra.