TWELVE months ago, when the then new chief executive of the RSNO, Michael Elliott, unveiled the current concert season, which, largely, he had inherited from his predecessor, he said it would be the last in its present form.

He had a shopping list of expansionist ideas for the organisation: he wanted the RSNO to do more playing, go to more places and play different things to different audiences.

Yesterday, as he unveiled the 2013/14 RSNO programme, entirely his own construct, the extent of Elliott's expansionism became apparent; and before RSNO classical diehards faint in alarm, I should assure them not only is the main-frame classical season intact, it too has expanded, with an increase from 17 to 20 programmes under the supervision of music director Peter Oundjian and his team of house and guest conductors.

But first, because it's neither marginal nor add-on material, the new stuff. Elliott has instituted a programme of regional touring for the orchestra. Three separate weeks in the season have been allocated to send "the bulk of the 85-strong RSNO" out on the road. This season they will go first to Arbroath, Inverness, Pitlochry, Langholm, Dunfermline and Glenrothes. There are other places in the pipeline, and dates, conductors and programmes will be announced later. And I should stress the orchestra's annual Out and About series (yet to be announced for next season) will continue in parallel with the new regional touring activities.

Next, Elliott wants to introduce a strong and significant film-music strand into the RSNO programme, and he's launching it next season with a full-screen presentation of The Wizard of Oz in the Royal Concert Hall, a screening with the music soundtrack removed and all of Dorothy's magical musical adventures accompanied live by the RSNO. There will be two screenings, one in the afternoon for families, and one at night in association with Glasgay!: costumes are welcomed, and I predict the latter will be a huge event. Christopher Bell will conduct.

The second film strand in the new season will be a spectacular orchestral concert devoted exclusively to the music of John Williams, doyen of big-screen composers. And Elliott revealed he is already in discussions about future projects with John Wilson, an established master in this field.

In a final expansionist stroke, Elliott is extending the RSNO's involvement with traditional music. The annual Phil Cunningham/Aly Bain concert continues, but next season another emblematic Scottish musical icon, Dougie MacLean, will have an RSNO concert to himself, in what appears to be the start of a project with MacLean and the RSNO that might result in a recording.

So there we are: greater variety, more performances and an unquestionable broadening of the RSNO palette. There is much to unpick and explore here, as time goes on.

"All this," says Elliott in his characteristically economic and undemonstrative way, "is the first expression of our ambitions to grow the number of performances, the variety of work for the musicians and the expanding of audiences."

Similarly with the new classical season in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Music director Oundjian will take eight of the programmes himself, principal guest conductor Thomas Sondergard will take four, probably rising to five, with one yet to be confirmed. Two Finns, Hannu Lintu and Susanna Maalki will take one each, as will Yan Pascal Tortelier, Douglas Boyd and Kristjan Jarvi.

The season is stuffed with blockbusters of every hue. Oundjian will open proceedings with, sensationally, the UK premiere of James MacMillan's Third Piano Concerto, to be played by Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and followed by Holst's Planets Suite. Six months later Oundjian will conclude the season with Mahler's Eighth Symphony, the so-called Symphony of a Thousand, where each of the eight vocal soloists will be drawn from a different Commonwealth nation.

In between times, Oundjian will fit in a centenary performance of Britten's War Requiem, performances of Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances, Walton's First, Dvorak's Seventh and Beethoven's Seventh Symphonies, and Strauss's blockbuster orchestral display piece, Ein Heldenleben. Concerto-wise, Oundjian accompanies the amazing Nikolai Lugansky in Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, Richard Goode in Mozart's 17th and Ingrid Fliter in Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto.

Not to be outdone on the blockbuster front, principal guest Thomas Sondergard has his own colossus of a concert with the first RSNO performance in several decades of Messiaen's huge, epic, 10-movement Turangalila Symphonie. From the giddy heights of Turangalila, Sondergard will come down to earth with Brahms's Fourth Symphony and Dvorak's New World, at which latter concert he will have the joy of accompanying the astonishing Norwegian violinist Wilde Frang in Britten's Violin Concerto.

Nicola Benedetti is never far from the playlists of Scottish orchestras, and next season she returns to the RSNO, albeit in a slightly different guise. With her regular cellist partner, Leonard Elschenbroich, she will play Brahms's still-neglected Double Concerto for Violin and Cello. Yan Pascal Tortelier will conduct, and on no account miss the second-half performance of Lutoslawski's blazing Concerto for Orchestra, a rip-roaring masterpiece.

Other highlights of the season include a very special 70th birthday performance of Brahms' First Piano Concerto by the greatest of UK pianists, John Lill, and a performance by principal clarinettist John Cushing of James MacMillan's clarinet concerto, Ninian, written for and premiered by Cushing.

There is much, much more in the new brochure, from the exotica of Ravi Shankar's Second Sitar Concerto, played by his daughter Anoushka, to Shostakovich Ten with Lawrence Renes, Act Two of The Nutcracker, Jack Liebeck playing Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto and the mandatory brace of Naked Classics, featuring next season the Fifth Symphonies of Vaughan Williams and Beethoven. It's all out there now: go for it.

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