New Sydney Symphony Chief Conductor
In late 2008, the reign of Santa Claus over the SSO will come to an end. However, I found out yesterday that the new Chief Conductor / Artistic Director position has been given to Vladimir Ashkenazy, commencing in January 2009 for three years.
This is pretty exciting stuff. Not only is he a really good pianist (one of my favourites), but a wonderful conductor as well. I was fortunate enough to secure A-reserve seats to one of his Sibelius concerts when he was here in 2004, and the performance was simply superb.
If you want to listen any of his music, I highly recommend that you check out some of his piano concertos (in particular, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, and Tchaikovsky).