Beethoven, courtesy of a native New Yorker

• Last Updated: October 17. 2009 4:18PM UAE / October 17. 2009 12:18PM GMT

Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic open the Abu dhabi Classics season next weekend. AP Photo / NY Philharmonic

New York Philharmonic
Emirates Palace
Friday, 8pm
Young People's Concert
Saturday, 9.30am
Al Jahili Fort, Al Ain
Satiurday, 8pm
www.abudhabiclassics.com

It’s been a dry old summer for classical music fans following the end of last season’s Abu Dhabi Classics programme. But the drought breaks next weekend, when the New York Philharmonic arrives for what will undoubtedly be the hottest ticket in town. It’s a venerable start to a new season that will also include France’s Radio Philharmonic in November and the German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter in January.

As if their arrival were not exciting enough, there is also a new director on board: 42-year-old Alan Gilbert, the first native New Yorker to be given the role in the orchestra’s 167-year history. He joined in September, following French-born American Lorin Maazel’s seven-year tenure, and he already has the critics’ pens aquiver, with The New York Times describing the orchestra’s recent performance of Schoenberg’s Pelleas and Melisande as “urgent, assured and luxuriously beautiful”.

The New York Philharmonic is nothing if not intrepid. In February 2008 it travelled, under invitation of the North Korean government, to Pyongyang, where it delivered a programme that included both the national anthems of North Korea and the United States, as well as some Wagner, Gershwin, Bizet and Bernstein.

On Friday, the halls of the Emirates Palace will ring with the sound of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto and Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony. And on Saturday, as well as performing at Al Jahili Fort in Al Ain, the orchestra will be giving a young people’s concert at the Emirates Palace in the morning, where children will be able to try out the instruments.

Silk Road lecture
Mamoura Auditorium
Abu Dhabi
Tomorrow, 6.30pm
nyuad.nyu.edu

It’s a subject that has growing relevance to Abu Dhabi as the city matures into a centre for intellectual exchange, and Monday will see Joanna Waley-Cohen, professor and chair of New York University’s history department, discuss The Silk Roads: A New Historical Perspective. It’s the second in New York University Abu Dhabi Institute’s autumn programme, and among the topics under discussion are: how the Silk Roads, overland and maritime, might look from the vantage point of Abu Dhabi; and how the idea of the Silk Roads has retained such strong appeal.

In fact, Waley-Cohen argues, with global interconnections becoming increasingly sophisticated and archeological excavation revealing the extent to which early traders travelled, as well as political developments increasing the focus on the areas that link East and West, the Silk Roads have never been more topical.

Brazilian parade
Corniche, Abu Dhabi
Tonight, 6-9pm

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