For star power, there is English pianist Stephen Hough with the Brahms Second Concerto in May, as well as conductor Gustavo Gimeno no doubt drawing on his own past prowess as a percussionist to search out new reverberations and resonances in Gareth Farr's From the depths sound the great sea gongs Part I.
On the local front, the orchestra includes Ross Harris' powerful Second Symphony in its April Anzac concert, with a major premiere of a new symphony by its CEO Christopher Blake a few weeks later.
For assured bedazzlement, don't miss July's performance of Messiaen's Eclairs sur l'au-dela which will be illuminated by Sir Andrew Davis in the Aotea Centre, or Steve Reich's Three Movements, in October's Bold Worlds, New Frontiers evening, which inexplicably includes Dvorak's New World Symphony.
The APO's generous brochure, teeming with the cultural riches that it offers the city, might seem a tad less adventurous than in previous seasons, with new music director Giordano Bellincampi keen on honing orchestral polish in core repertoire.
With soloists like Li-Wei Qin playing Walton's Cello Concerto in the first February concert of the New Zealand Herald Premier series and other guests including violinist Feng Ning (Korngold in May) and pianist Cedric Tiberghien (Saint-Saens' exotic Egyptian Concerto in November), loyal audiences will not be disappointed.
The APO has always been clever at slipping in the unusual as naturally as if it were the everyday. After all, why shouldn't Ligeti introduce Mozart and Strauss in April or Zemlinsky follow on from Mendelssohn and Mozart in August? Best of all is Schoenberg's Violin Concerto turning up in the first of a new series that sounds a little like a playful twist on a Lorenz Hart lyric, Denounced, Degenerate, Outraged.
Star batonmeisters include Vladimir Ashkenazy in October and Garry Walker in May.
The orchestra's annual Choral Classics has been subsumed into the main series with Stephen Layton giving us Bach and Arvo Part in August. Simon O'Neill fans will be able to enjoy him both in July's Opera in Concert (Verdi's Otello) and, four months before that, in John Adams' Nixon in China as part of the Auckland Arts Festival.
On the local side, a Sixth Symphony from Ross Harris brings back Australian mezzo Fiona Campbell, after her triumph singing Berio earlier this year. Gareth Farr undertakes the challenge of creating musical earthquakes and volcanos for the March dance project Ruaumoko, and no doubt the APO's new resident composer, Karlo Margetic, celebrated for his adrenalin-pumping chamber scores, will come up with orchestral wonderment in November.
With the Lilburn Centenary now gone, Chamber Music New Zealand's programme looks overseas for more of its artists. Watch out for jazz pianist Uri Caine deconstructing the classics alongside the New Zealand String Quartet in March, and Les Talens Lyriques dispensing cool and classy musicking a month later. Full marks to CMNZ for its sponsorship of the home-grown. Four of its concerts feature new composer commissions, ranging from Alex Taylor working with the American Enso Quartet to the voice of Selina Fisher, complementing the music of Mozart and Brahms as part of an ambitious three-concert mini-festival in October.
