For Kiwi fare, Dame Evelyn Glennie presides over John Psathas' 2001 View from Olympus but apart from that, we can expect smaller-scale scores from Ross Harris and the APO's new resident composer, Kenneth Young.
Next year brings in a number of new conductors. Grammy-winning Paul McCreesh gives us Mozart and Elgar in May. The most intriguing must be John Nelson in March, with Messiaen, Respighi and Beethoven, while pianist Joanna MacGregor offers her own mini-recital mid-concert.
While the music in Bayleys' Great Classic series is more traditional, who would want to miss violist Maxim Rysanov's Tchaikovsky or cellist Torleif Thedeen's Schumann?
The Splendour series has morphed into Remember WWI, three concerts in which music director Eckehard Stier conducts favourites such as Elgar's Cello Concerto (with Li-Wei Qin), Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale and extracts from Berg's Wozzeck.
At the launch, there was a glow of satisfaction when chief executive Barbara Glaser announced Tristan and Isolde as the Opera in Concert. The overture is familiar to many as the soundtrack for Lars von Trier's doomsday drama Melancholia. Next July, you can experience the whole Wagner opera with top-notch European soloists, but allow six hours for it (including interval and dinner break).
The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra's brochure is refreshingly sober after years of ad-agency overkill; Beethoven is on the cover, publicising the orchestra's mid-year festival of the complete symphonies under music director Pietari Inkinen.
The 14 remaining concerts feature two new local commissions, by Gareth Farr and Lyell Cresswell, while a welcome revival of Jack Body's Little Elegies is part of May's We Remember concert.
Guest soloists to watch out for are Hakan Hardenberger playing a Brett Dean Trumpet Concerto, Russian pianist Alexander Melnikov with Schumann, and American cellist Alisa Weilerstein with Prokofiev.
A performance of Haydn's The Creation under Nicholas McGegan will showcase soprano Madeleine Pierard, while Shostakovich 15 under Alexander Lazarev in May and Mahler 9 under Edo de Waart in August both promise satisfying symphonic experiences.
For fine music on a smaller scale, Chamber Music New Zealand has again set up a generous nine nationwide tours and Aucklanders should remember that Hamilton is just down the road for those alternative programmes.
In a line-up celebrating the string quartet, the Hungarian Kelemen Quartet give us Kurtag and Ligeti in the Fountain City and two months later, Canadian clarinetist James Campbell and the New Zealand String Quartet offer us Brahms with a doubling of Weber and Mozart a few evenings later.
At the end of the season, the final visitors, the great Borodin Quartet, slip in a rarity by Soviet composer Myaskovsky alongside Shostakovich and Beethoven.
June sees the return of Nikki Chooi, winner of last year's Michael Hill International Violin Competition; in his Auckland programme, with pianist Stephen De Pledge and cellist Ashley Brown, he replaces Hamilton's Ysaye and Prokofiev with a Smetana Trio.
Two highlights are provided by local players and composers. In August, pianists Diedre Irons and Michael Endres deliver Mozart and Ravel before bringing on two percussionists for Bartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion.
In March, watch out for the Beijing-based Forbidden City Chamber Orchestra. Its programme balances Chinese music with new works by Kiwis Michael Norris, David Downes, Jack Body and Dylan Lardelli.
