ROYAL Northern Sinfonia has unveiled a new classical season taking audiences through three key musical journeys.

Reclaiming Mozart, Sibelius and the Musical North, and Early Encounters will form the core programmes at Sage Gateshead for the 2015/16.

The season will see Lars Vogt taking up his post as music director and Julian Rachlin as principal guest conductor.

While music of Mozart has often been abandoned to commercialism - chocolate boxes and Mozart for Babies CDs - the RNS aims to dispel the preconceptions.

It will put the music of Mozart into context, as music written to the applause of archdukes, kings and emperors, but from a musician very much an outsider, driven into crippling debts to remain on the inside.

Highlights of the journey include the Symphony No 25 in the opening concert conducted by Vogt on Friday October 30, as well as the brooding Piano Concerto No 20 and the Symphony No 31 that gives two fingers to the fashionable music of bourgeois Parisian society.

There are also the works that cemented his reputation - his impressive Symphony No 41 ‘Jupiter’ , the Mass in C Minor ‘The Great’, written in rejoice after the near loss of his beloved Constanza and Symphony No 40.

The season also marks the 150th anniversary of Sibelius’s birth, so RNS doffs its hat to the Finnish master of symphonic form.

The journey takes on the seven symphonies, welcoming the Sinfonia’s symphony orchestra counterparts to Sage Gateshead The Halle with Sir Mark Elder and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra with Vasily Petrenko.

The Violin Concerto will be performed by Christian Tetzlaff.

The music of Sibelius is put into context with fellow Scandinavian composers, including Grieg’s lightning Piano Concerto and two Late Mix concerts surveying contemporary voices of the Musical North – including Arvo Pärt’s mesmerising minimalism and the likes of more avant garde composers Hans Abrahamsen and Magnus Lindberg.

The Early Encounters journey provides two takes on period performance: the traditional, purist interpretations performed on period instruments, and a more contemporary review of Baroque works. For the former, three distinguished guest ensembles visit: Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment for a rule-breaking Night Shift, as well as the Dunedin Consort and Avison Ensemble.

The journey encompasses Bach’s B Minor Mass, the traditional Christmas favourite Handel’s Messiah, as well as a concert drawing on the transition from the Bach family’s Baroque to Mozart and the classical "style galant" with American musicologist and Baroque specialist Robert Levin.

The Classic FM series continues, with the return of John Wilson and his Sunday Matinee concerts, as well as Montenegrin guitar sensation Milos, while the New Year brings new faces, as the RNS celebrate the next generation of classical music stars as part of a week-long young artists festival.

The season will go on sale to Sage Supporters and Friends of Royal Northern Sinfonia on Saturday April 18, with general sale opening on Thursday May 21.

For more information visit www.sagegateshead.com.