Rattle to conduct every Schumann symphony

Sir Simon Rattle will conduct all Schumann's symphonies and pianist Alfred Brendel will play his final London concert in the new classical music season at the Southbank Centre.

Schumann's four symphonies performed by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment will continue the trend for complete works. Daniel Barenboim packed the Royal Festival Hall earlier this year when he played all Beethoven's piano sonatas.

Brendel, 77, who announced his retirement from performance in November, has confirmed his last London date will be 12 October.

He will play Mozart's Piano Concerto No 9, known as the Jeunehomme, or Young Man, conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras.

The performance is likely to be an emotional highlight of the 2008-09 season, which begins in September and continues until June next year.

Other events include a major festival honouring composer Karlheinz Stockhausen who died in December, aged 79. It will feature the UK premieres of part of Klang, a cycle of pieces he had been working on in his last few years, and of his last completed work, Zodiac.

International Voices is a new series of concerts showcasing great vocalists, from Russian soprano Anna Netrebko to Bombay Jayashri, who performs traditional Indian classical-music. There will be celebrations of the music of Olivier Messiaen and Elliott Carter, both of whom were born a century ago. Carter is still alive while Messiaen died in 1992.

Another festival will feature the work of Tchaikovsky and artists including Mitsuko Uchida will appear in a series of concerts with great pianists.

Performers scheduled to appear are the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under Zubin Mehta and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela - with young people from the country's shanty towns - under Gustavo Dudamel. Esa-Pekka Salonen will take the baton for his first season as principal conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Southbank.

Jude Kelly, the Southbank Centre's artistic director, said: "Barenboim's breathtaking Beethoven sonata cycle showed how the greatest artists and interpreters of the classical tradition can communicate to the most wideranging audience.

"This season's programme continues to broaden the reach and to feature some of the most exciting artists in the classical world today."