Next year!

Booking has opened already for both the Barbican's Great Performers Season 2010/11 and the LSO's 2010/11 season at the Barbican. For the Great Performers the Barbican give up to 20% discount to members if you book early, so there is great incentive to plan your life away. Besides there are some fabulous concerts.

Handel's Alcina, with Anja Harteros Vessalina Kassarova, Veronica Cangemi, Caitlin Hulcup and Les Musiciens du Louvre under Mark Minkowski, and Ariodante with Joyce DiDonato, Karina Gauvin and Il Complesso Barocco under Alan Curtis. Cecilia Bartoli is doing a programme based on Handel and his Rivals with Il Giardino Harmonico. and the Sixteen are doing Messiah.

Andreas Scholl and Philippe Jaroussky are giving a joint recital with Ensemble Artaserse which should have many music lovers salivating at he combination. As it is Pergolesi's anniversary year the English Concert are doing the Stabat Mater with Anna Caterina Antonacci and Sara Mingardo, plus music by Vivaldi and Porpora. And Ian Bostridge is doing a programme with Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante performing Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Caldara, Handel and Boyce.

Further forward in time there is the Academy in Ancient Music under Richard Egarr doing Mozart's La Finta Giartiniera, Idomeneo performed by the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble under Thomas Hengelbrock with Steve Davislim, Camilla Tilling and Anna Caterina Antonnacci sand a performance of the Mass in C minor which includes Sally Matthews, Ann Hallenberg and Rainer Trost.

Then there are visits from the Houston Symphony under Hans Graf (Holst's The Planets), the LSO under Simon Rattle (Messiaen's Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum and Bruckner 9) and the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Gustavo Dudamel (Mahler 9, Beethoven 7, Bernstein 1 and Adams's Slonimsky's Earbox).

Finally there is Debussy's Pelleas and Melisande with mainly French forces, Natalie Dessay, Simon Keenlyside, Laurent Naouri and the Orchestra de Paris under Louis Langree.

The LSO programme is not quite as interesting to us, partly because it concentrates on the late 19th and early 20th century symphonic repertoire. Though there is a performance of RVW's Oxford Elegy, a commission from Eric Whitacre, Elgar's The Kingdom, Prokofiev's Ivan the Terrible plus a terrific concert from the NYSO.

So, as you can see there is plenty to tempt you, especially if you get 20% off. But it seems an alarming tendency in concert going for booking dates to get earlier and earlier, so that we now know what we are doing in May next year.