Alan Gilbert returns to Japan to conduct Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, “Choral,” in holiday concerts with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, featuring vocal soloists Christina Nilsson, Rinat Shaham, Michael Weinius and Morris Robinson with Tokyo’s New National Theatre Chorus (Dec 24–26). He has served as Principal Guest Conductor of the Japanese orchestra since 2018.

Then, early in the New Year, Gilbert returns to the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra for a two-program residency. This opens with Lera Auerbach’s Sixth Symphony, “Vessels of Light,” a work dedicated to Chiune Sugihara, the late Japanese vice-consul who helped six thousand Jews escape Nazi-occupied Lithuania. Timed to anticipate Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, performances of the symphony will feature the Leipzig Gewandhaus Choir and cello soloist Kristina Reiko Cooper, whose in-laws are among the descendants of those same escapees. To complete the program, Gilbert and the orchestra pair Auerbach’s work with Shostakovich’s searing Tenth Symphony, of which the conductor’s interpretation impressed the New York Times as “wrenching, blazing and vehement” (Jan 11 & 14). He and the Gewandhaus Orchestra also juxtapose Shostakovich’s symphony with Beethoven’s Eighth (Jan 12), before concluding the residency with a coupling of Bruckner’s Third with the world premiere of Bernd Franke’s piano concerto, Genesis, featuring Michael Wollny as soloist (Jan 18 & 19).