The 2007/2008 season will be the sixth of the orchestra's muchadmired principal conductor, Gerhard Markson, who inspired the orchestra through a mammoth Mahler symphonic cycle last season. He will conduct nine of the orchestra's 30 scheduled Friday night concerts, including the opening concert this week (7 September) and the much-anticipated performances of Verdi's Requiem and the allimportant anniversary gala concert next April.

The German Romantics will comprise a large share of the musical pie in this upcoming RTE NSO season, none less definitive of that genre than Wagner, the thread of whose legacy will be first spun this coming Friday in the composer's Wesendonk-Lieder and which will culminate in his ultimate triumph, Der Ring des Nibelung, extracts of which will be performed in the penultimate concert of the season in May 2008.

Arguably the most exciting concert on the Wagner trail will be that of 19 October, when soprano Miriam Murphy, the joint winner of the 2006 International Wagner Competition, performs Isolde's Liebestod, in the composer's arrangement of the prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde.

The music of another hero of Romanticism, Hector Berlioz, also begins and ends this 2007/2008 season . . . on Friday, his autobiographical masterpiece, Symphonie Fantastique, which was inspired by the composer's love affair with the Irish actress Harriet Smithson and, to finish the entire season, his requiem (Grande Messe de Morts), an infamously colossal work requiring four offstage brass choirs and full voice choir, on this occasion, the RTE Philharmonic.

Speaking of colossal and dramatic works, and again featuring the RTE Philharmonic Choir, the 30 November performance of Carl Orff 's Carmina Burana will already be in the diary for many, even if only because of, and justifiably so, the famous O Fortunamovement.

Who'd have thought Old Spice aftershave could have boosted Orff 's credibility so considerably?

Another such famed work is Polish composer Henryk Gorecki's third symphony, better known as Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, an enchanting work for soprano (who sings in Polish) and orchestra.

When released into the market in 1992, the 1991 recording by Dawn Upshaw and the London Sinfonietta under David Zinman (Nonesuch label) miraculously enjoyed the success usually reserved for pop artists. It sold 700,000 copies within two years and reached No 6 in the mainstream UK music charts. An outstanding success story for a little-known Polish composer but, if you're easily moved to tears by music, you'll definitely need your Kleenex for this concert.

The devoted Friday night NCH regulars will also have an exciting line-up of soloists to look forward to throughout the coming nine months, with several exciting debut performances with the orchestra to add to the list, including that of US mezzosoprano, Jane Dutton, who will perform the Wesendonk-Lieder in next Friday's opening concert, a work with which she recently made her UK debut.

But everyone's wondering about the same thing at this stage . . . will the 60th anniversary of the RTE NSO mark the beginning of a happy new era of RTE performing groups under new executive director, Seamus Crimmins? Time will tell.