The new season began with a visit by the City of London Sinfonia and their Music Director Richard Hickox to the Montreux Festival in SWITZERLAND. The Orchestra was performing Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, together with soloists Pamela Helen Stephen and Susan Gritton and the Joyful Company of Singers, a repeat of their triumphal performance earlier in the season at London’s Barbican Centre. American pianist Robert Levin joined the Orchestra for the first half, performing Beethoven’s Emperor concerto. In October Bremen’s Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie visited JAPAN conducted by Guenter Pichler and gave 8 concerts including Osaka, Nagano and Tokyo’s incredible Opera City complex. Reversing the trend of export to the Far East, Intermusica organised the first European visit by the China National Symphony Orchestra with their Music Director Chen Zuohuang. Their 9-concert tour included sold-out performances in Bremen, Vienna and Frankfurt as well as London and Oxford in the UK. Symphonic concerts in SPAIN continue to attract large and adventurous audiences, and the two concerts given by the Hamburg Philharmonic with Music Director Ingo Metzmacher in December were no exception. Capacity halls in Valencia and in Madrid heard Thomas Allen in Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony. The Orchestra and Metzmacher were immediately re-invited for a future tour. The end of December and the New Year were enlivened by the first ever visit of the London Symphony Chorus to Australia to give the opening concerts of the Sydney Festival. The Chorus were performing with Richard Hickox and the Sydney Festival Orchestra and were augmented by the Sydney Philharmonia choir. The Chorus also gave a recital in the Sydney Town Hall under the direction of their Chorus Master Stephen Westrop in an uncompromising programme including Durufle’s Requiem. Most recently Intermusica has organised short tours for the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden to GERMANY with Paolo Olmi and Jennifer Larmore and a visit by the BBC Philharmonic to SPAIN with their Music Director Yan Pascal Tortelier and Michael Collins. As we go to press the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra are returning from an extensive tour of JAPAN, conducted by Heinrich Schiff and the Academy of Ancient Music are about to leave for the Lucerne Easter Festival where they will perform Mozart’s Requiem.