Welcome to a season that celebrates a great landmark in the history of the Hallé: the 150th anniversary of the first concert performed by Britain's oldest professional symphony orchestra.

The anniversary falls on 30 January 2008, so we will break with tradition and give a Thursday Series concert on a Wednesday. This programme, as with so many in the months to come, will include works that were given their world premieres or first British performances by the Hallé.

The anniversary concert will feature works by Elgar and Vaughan Williams as well as Weber's Konzertstück for piano and orchestra and Constant Lambert's The Rio Grande. Among the soloists on this special night will be the baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who gave such a blazing, charismatic performance with me at the Last Night of the Proms in 2006.

In November we mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Sibelius with 'The Origin of Fire', a four-concert series that will include a complete cycle of his seven symphonies. The Thursday Series programme includes the Second Symphony: Hans Richter's performance with the Hallé in 1905 was the first time that any Sibelius symphony had been heard in Britain.

As part of our 150th-birthday celebrations, the Hallé has commissioned a cello concerto from John McCabe, a composer with a strong association with the orchestra, which gave the premieres of three of his works between 1965 and 1975. In December, Martyn Brabbins conducts and James Crabb plays The Singing, Sally Beamish's lyrical accordion concerto that they first performed with the orchestra in 2006.

The Thursday Series also includes, on Maundy Thursday, a long-overdue performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion. It is a work that has been very close to me since I sang in a performance in Canterbury as a boy chorister, but it has not been performed by the Hallé for 40 years.

Next spring, Thomas Zehetmair joins the orchestra to play Elgar's Violin Concerto for the first time and three weeks later I will conduct Elgar's First Symphony: it was the Hallé under Richter which gave the first performance of this much-loved work in 1908.

Welcome to a wonderful season. Please join us in celebrating a very special year in the life of this great orchestra.