Kirill Karabits took up his post as Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in 2009, becoming the first Ukrainian to have this role with a UK orchestra.

In May this year Kirill, aged 36, received the Royal Philharmonic Conductor Award, the most prestigious award for live classical music in the UK.

This summer saw him recording on home ground in Poole and making two important debut performances with orchestras on the international stage:

I am very happy to be returning to Bournemouth and Poole to begin my fifth year as Principal Conductor with Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

It has been a busy time in the summer months leading up to the start of the BSO’s 2013/14 season in October. I have been spending some time here in Bournemouth and Poole and there has been some travelling to the international stage, too.

In July, for example, I began recording with the full BSO in Poole for the launch of Prokofiev Symphony Cycle. We worked over four full days to record all seven of Prokofiev’s symphonies and the sinfonia concertante.

This is the start of a great journey as recording a cycle is a huge artistic undertaking for any orchestra. However, the BSO is famous for recording big symphonies, such as the world premiere of Sibelius’s symphonies under the renowned late Finnish conductor Paavo Berglund in the 1970s. Now I am very proud to be leading the new generation of cycles here with the BSO.

And this is very special for me because Prokofiev is in my blood – he was born in my home country – and I will be doing this working with an orchestra that is superbly good at playing it After this, I flew to the Ukraine for two weeks of holiday with my family – but only two weeks!

At the end of the month I landed in the USA to make very important debuts with two orchestras – the Philadelphia and the Cleveland.

On July 31 I stood before the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Mann Centre, for the first time to conduct music by three Russian titans: Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov.

This was a very exciting concert for me. Not only did I make my debut appearance with this orchestra, but I had the honour also of conducting Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring on the 100th anniversary of the premiere of this powerful piece.

Then I crossed the state border to conduct Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto and Prokofiev’s symphony No 5 in the magnificent setting of the Blossom Music Centre, which has provided the summer home for The Cleveland Orchestra since it opened in 1968.

The concert was part of this year’s Blossom Summer Festival of open-air music, which is situated on 800 acres of rolling hills surrounded by the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. It was an amazing experience to perform in this beautiful outdoor setting, in front of thousands of people seated or spread out on blankets under the stars.

I also had the opportunity to work again with Gil Shaman, the acclaimed US musician, who was the solo violinist in this concert. And now I return to the UK to begin rehearsing with the BSO for the BBC Proms in August.