Hotels near the BBC Scottish Symphony in Aberdeen

The BBC Scottish Symphony's annual Friday night visits to the Aberdeen Music Hall bring both chief conductor Donald Runnicles and guest conductors. There's nothing quite like an orchestra playing at full pelt, or achieving the quietest pianissimo immediately after.

Runnicles opens and closes the season, firstly with Beethoven, Richard Strauss (Four Last Songs) and Elgar's Second Symphony (30 September) and lastly with a typical Austrian pairing of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto with Martin Fröst, and Bruckner's Seventh Symphony (11 May). The penultimate concert is also Runnicles', with Strauss' Don Juan, Haydn and Brahms' First Symphony (23 March).

Ilan Volkov returns on 4 November with Wagner, Julian Anderson, Berlioz and Sibelius' rousing Second Symphony, while Jun Märkl brings more Strauss, Prokofiev and Schumann's Third Symphony (Rhenish) on 17 Feburary. The Christmas Classics concert (22 December) bucks the Friday norm, happening on a Thursday.