Press Enter to search
Daniel Harding CBE is Music and Artistic Director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, with whom in 2022 he celebrated his 15-year anniversary. He is Conductor Laureate of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with whom he has worked for over 20 years. In 2024, he will take up the position of Music Director of the Youth Music Culture, The Greater Bay Area for a five-year term, and that same season will take up the position of Music Director of the Orchestra and Chorus of the Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.
He is a regular visitor to the world’s foremost orchestras, including the Wiener Philharmoniker, Berliner Philharmoniker, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Staatskapelle Dresden, London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala. In the US, he has appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony.
A renowned opera conductor, he has led critically acclaimed productions at the Teatro alla Scala Milan, Wiener Staatsoper, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and at the Aix-en-Provence and Salzburg Festivals.
He is a qualified airline pilot.
Born in Toro, Spain, Jesús López-Cobos studied at the universities of Granada and Madrid, earning a doctorate in philosophy in 1964. In his student days, López-Cobos led a student chorus with such success that he decided to undertake full-time musical studies, first earning a degree in composition from Madrid in 1966. He then studied conducting with Franco Ferrara in Italy. In 1968, López-Cobos won first prize at the Besançon international conducting competition, and as a student of Hans Swarowsky he took his degree in conducting at the Vienna Academy in 1969. That same year, López-Cobos gave his debut concert as a symphony conductor in Prague, and as an opera conductor at La Fenice in Venice.
López-Cobos first led the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1970 and would serve as general musical director for that company from 1981 to 1990. During that time, López-Cobos led Wagner’s Ring cycle on tour in Japan in 1987; the tour marked the first time the whole Ring cycle had been staged in that country. In the 1970s and 1980s, López-Cobos also led opera productions at Covent Garden, San Francisco, the Vienna Opera, La Scala, and he Metropolitan in New York. López-Cobos was named principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic and served there from 1981 to 1986. Also, from 1984 to 1989, he served as principal conductor and artistic director of the Spanish National Orchestra.
In 1986, López-Cobos was named principal conductor and music director of the Cincinnati Symphony; he added the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra to his musical directorships in 1990. With Cincinnati he would embark on an extensive recording schedule with Telarc, resulting in recordings of works by Respighi, Ravel, Richard Strauss, Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler, Falla, Bizet, Franck, and Dukas. Among these, his recording of the Mahler Symphony No. 9 has been singled out as a critical favorite, and his complete recording of Albéniz’s Iberia in the Arbos and Surinach orchestrations is apparently unique in the catalog. His repertory was rich with works of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. López-Cobos also recorded with the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra for Denon and Teldec.
López-Cobos led the usually homebound Cincinnati Symphony on several tours, including one to Puerto Rico in 1998 and the first West Coast tour in the orchestra’s history in 1992. His annual appearances with the Cincinnati orchestra at Carnegie Hall in New York regularly sold out the house. In 1997, López-Cobos led the ensemble in its first coast-to-coast telecast on PBS, featuring pianist Alicia de Larrocha. In 1996, the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music awarded López-Cobos an honorary doctorate in music.
In 2001, maestro López-Cobos became conductor emeritus in Cincinnati. He also ended his association with the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra in 2000. López Cobos was the first Spanish Conductor to climb the podium at the Scala in Milan, the Covent Garden in London, the Paris Opera and the Metropolitan in New York. He directed opera regularly, having collaborated in five productions at the Opéra de La Bastille in Paris, at the Metropolitan in New York with “Manon” and “Thaïs”; in Chicago, the Orange Festival, etc. He was also Musical Director of the Teatro Real de Madrid and Chief Conductor of the Madrid Symphony Orchestra with which he offered his own series of concerts.
López-Cobos continued as permanent conductor of the Orchestre Français des Jeunes, a Paris-based summer workshop for student musicians. He died in Berlin in March 2018 at the age of 78.
Iván Fischer is founder and Music Director of the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Music Director of the Konzerthaus and the Konzerthausorchester in Berlin. Recently he has also been active as a composer: his works have been performed in the US, Holland, Belgium, Hungary, Germany and Austria. He also staged successful opera performances, recently a Mozart cycle in Budapest and New York.
The 30 year-old partnership with the Budapest Festival Orchestra has become one of the greatest success stories of classical music. Intense international touring and a series of acclaimed recordings for Philips Classics, later for Channel Classics have contributed to Iván Fischer’s reputation as one of the world’s most visionary and successful orchestra leaders.
Both in Berlin and Budapest he has developed and introduced new types of concerts, “cocoa-concerts” for young children, “surprise” concerts where the programme is announced from the stage, “public dress rehearsals” where he talks to the audience, open-air concerts attracting tens of thousands of people and “staged concerts” combining concert and theatre. He has founded several festivals, including one composer marathons, the Budapest Mahlerfest which is also a forum for commissioning and presenting new compositions and the Bridging Europe Festival.
As a guest conductor Fischer works with the finest symphony orchestras of the world. He has been invited to the Berlin Philharmonic more than ten times, he leads every year two weeks of programs with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and appears with leading US symphony orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra.
Earlier music director of Kent Opera and Lyon Opera, Principal Conductor of National Symphony Orchestra in Washington DC, his numerous recordings have won several prestigious international prizes.
Ivan Fischer studied piano, violin, cello and composition in Budapest, continuing his education in Vienna in Professor Hans Swarowsky’s conducting class.
Mr. Fischer is a founder of the Hungarian Mahler Society, and Patron of the British Kodály Academy. He received the Golden Medal Award from the President of the Republic of Hungary, and the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum for his services to help international cultural relations. The French Government named him Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. In 2006 he was honored with the Kossuth Prize, Hungary’s most prestigious arts award. He is honorary citizen of Budapest. In 2011 he received the Royal Philharmonic Award and the Dutch Ovatie prize. In 2013 he was awarded Honorary Membership of the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Recently appointed Chief Conductor and Music Advisor of the Philadelphia Orchestra as well as Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Charles Dutoit regularly collaborates with the world’s pre-eminent orchestras and soloists.
Renowned for polished and idiomatic interpretations of an eclectic array of musical styles and since his debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1980, Charles Dutoit has been invited each season to conduct other major orchestras of the United States, including those of Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Pittsburgh.
He has also performed regularly with all the great orchestras of Europe, including the Berlin Philharmonic and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra as well as with all the London orchestras, the major orchestras of Japan, South America and Australia.
Charles Dutoit has recorded extensively for Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Philips, CBS, Erato among other labels with American, European and Japanese orchestras. His more than 170 recordings, half of them with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, have garnered over 40 awards and distinctions around the world.
For 25 years (1977 to 2002) Charles Dutoit was Artistic Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, a dynamic musical partnership recognized the world over.
He has also been closely associated with the Philadelphia Orchestra since 1990 as Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Orchestra’s summer festival at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York and he led the Orchestra in a series of distinctive recordings.
From 1991 to 2001, Charles Dutoit was Music Director of the Orchestre National de France with which he made a number of critically lauded recordings, and toured extensively on the five continents. In 1998, he was appointed Music Director of the NHK Symphony Orchestra (Tokyo) with which he has toured Europe, the United States, China and Southeast Asia and is today Music Director Emeritus of the Orchestra.
When still in his early 20’s, Charles Dutoit was invited by Von Karajan to lead the Vienna State Opera. He has since conducted regularly at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, New York and the Deutsche Oper, Berlin. He also led a highly acclaimed new production of Berlioz’s masterpiece Les Troyens at the Los Angeles Music Center Opera.
In 2003, he began a series of Wagner operas – Der fliegende Holländer and the complete Ring Cycle – at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires.
Artistic Director for three seasons of the Sapporo Pacific Music Festival, Charles Dutoit is presently Artistic Director of the Miyazaki International Music Festival in Japan as well as Artistic Director of the Canton International Summer Music Academy (CISMA) in Guangzhou (Canton), China which he founded in 2005.
Charles Dutoit also participated in a series of educational documentary films entitled Cities of Music produced by the NHK Television of Tokyo and which features ten musical capitals of the world.
In 1991, Charles Dutoit was made Honorary Citizen of the City of Philadelphia. In 1995, the government of Québec named him Grand Officier de l’Ordre national du Québec and in 1996, he was invested as Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France. He is the recipient of two awards by the Canadian Conference of the Arts and in 1998, Charles Dutoit was invested as Honorary Officer of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest award of merit whose other honorary recipients include John Kenneth Galbraith, James Hillier, Nelson Mandela, The Queen Mother, Vaclav Havel and Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
Charles Dutoit was born in Lausanne, Switzerland and his extensive musical training included history of music, composition, violin, viola, piano and percussion at the conservatoires of Geneva, Siena, Venice and Boston. A globetrotter motivated by his passion for history and archaeology, political science, art and architecture, Charles Dutoit has traveled in all 195 nations of the world. He maintains residences in Switzerland, Paris, Montreal, Buenos Aires and Tokyo.
Paul Hess is the President of the Académie de l’opera Association (Geneva), its conductor and musical director. He is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, the Mozarteum in Salzburg and the Academia Chigiana in Siena, Italy. He is a laureate of the Besançon International Conducting Competition and a recipient of a Fullbright Scholarship in Italy. He studied conducting with the Masters: Michael Tilson Thomas, Sir Charles Mackerras, Rafael Kubelik, Stanley Pope, Franco Ferrara, Boris Goldovsky, and conducted concerts and operas in Boston, Salzburg, Buffalo, Rome, Siena, Bologna, Treviso, San Remo, Trapani, Besançon, Geneva, Basel and Bern, and prestigious orchestras such as the OSR, OCG, OCL, BBC. He is also a regular member of the jury for international opera competitions.
Paul Hess is also a cartoonist and humorous portraitist. His drawings have been published in various specialised music magazines, including Il Mondo de la Musica (Rome) and Clavier (United States). He has been exhibited at the Rome Opera (100 drawings), at Victoria Hall in Geneva, at the B. F. M. in Geneva, at the Radio Suisse Romande in Lausanne, at the Télévision Suisse Romande in Geneva and at the G.A.T.T. in Geneva.
His career as a musical director; symphonic orchestras, ballets, operas, operettas, musicals, choirs, and his talent as a draughtsman and his pedagogical abilities, lead him today quite naturally towards teaching and passing on knowledge and expertise to new generations.
Mäkelä’s third season as Chief Conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic features eleven contrasting programmes, with repertoire ranging from Jean Baptiste Lully and Pietro Locatelli to Alban Berg and Mahler to Anna Thorvaldsdottir and Julia Perry. In Autumn 2022, Mäkelä and the Oslo Philharmonic embark on their second European tour with performances in Germany, Belgium and Austria with soloist Sol Gabetta.
For his second season as Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris, Klaus Mäkelä has chosen to spotlightcomposers Pascal Dusapin, Betsy Jolas, Jimmy López Bellido, Magnus Lindberg and Kaija Saariaho, the latter featured with three different works. There is also a focus on the Ballets Russes, with two key Diaghilev scores: Stravinsky’s The Firebird and Rite of Spring. In Spring 2023, Mäkelä and Orchestre de Paris tour throughout Europe with Janine Jansen as soloist.
With the Concertgebouworkest Klaus Mäkelä embarks on a long-term collaboration, joining the orchestra as Artistic Partner with effect from the 2022-23 season and as its next Chief Conductor in 2027. For their first season together, they perform six programmes including Mahler Symphony No. 6, the Mozart Requiem and Strauss Alpine Symphony as well premieres by López Bellido, Sauli Zinovjev, Alexander Raskatov and Sally Beamish. On tour they performed the opening concert of the Musikfest Berlin and at the Koln Philharmonie.
As a guest conductor in the 2022/23 season Klaus Mäkelä makes his first appearances with the New York Philharmonic, Berliner Philharmoniker, Gewandhausorchester and Wiener Symphoniker and returns to the USA to conduct the Cleveland Orchestra and Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Mäkelä studied conducting at the Sibelius Academy with Jorma Panula and cello with Marko Ylönen, Timo Hanhinen and Hannu Kiiski. As a soloist, he has performed with several Finnish orchestras and as a chamber musician at the Verbier Festival, as well as with members of the Oslo Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.
“Absolute artist”, and “a true musician” are words frequently used to describe the conductor, composer and orchestrator Mathieu Herzog.
His musical soul was shaped through working under the guidance of great masters such as Semyon Bychkov, Daniel Harding, György Kurtäg, Gábor Takács-Nagy, Menahem Pressler, Alfred Brendel, and Mitsuko Uchida.
Mathieu has recorded numerous discs for labels such as Warner Classics, EMI, SONY, and Deutsche Grammophon. These recordings received worldwide critical acclaim and were awarded the “Diapason d’Or”, the “Choc du Monde de la Musique”, and Gramophone’s “Recording of the Year”, to name just a few.
In 2015, Mathieu founded Appassionato, an orchestra which radiates chamber playing in every one of its performances. Mathieu has formed a passionate and ever-evolving relationship with this ensemble, and together, they recorded the last three W.A. Mozart symphonies for the label Naïve. In 2021-2022, he founded Appassionato le Label in partnership with Naïve and recorded two further discs, exploring the music of C. Saint-Saëns and the post-Romantic recording Métamorphoses nocturnes, awarded an Editor’s Choice by the prestigious magazine Grammophon.
Mathieu Herzog is also an associate artist of la Seine Musicale (France), for which he has launched “Vous trouvez ça classique?” (lit. “Do you think this is classical?”), which is aimed at helping new audiences listen to and experience classical music in a new way.
Alongside his work as a performer, Mathieu is also an accomplished orchestrator and prolific arranger, whether it be for Appassionato, for classical musicians such as Roberto Alagna, Nadine Sierra, Philippe Jaroussky and Natalie Dessay, and for vocalists across other genres, for example Stacey Kent and Luz Casals to name a few.
In 2019 Mathieu was appointed Musical Director of the Blaricum Music Festival (Holland), a position he held since. He has also been involved in music training and masterclasses for the Blaricum Music Festival Orchestra since then.
Highlights of the 2021-2022 season include guest appearances conducting the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Korean Symphony Orchestra, and the Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra (Japan) to name just a few. And conducting his Appassionato.
Passionate about literature and history, Mathieu is also currently working on a libretto based on the life of Georges Bizet.
Over the past decade, Jaap van Zweden has been an international presence on three continents. Currently, he is Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, a post he began in 2018, and Music Director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic since 2012.
Van Zweden has appeared as guest conductor with many other leading orchestras around the globe, among them the Orchestre de Paris, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics, and the London Symphony Orchestra.
Jaap van Zweden has made numerous acclaimed recordings, the most recent of which are a 2020 release with the New York Philharmonic of the World Premiere of David Lang’s prisoner of the state, and the 2019 release of the World Premiere of Julia Wolfe’s Fire in my mouth, continuing the Philharmonic’s partnership with Decca Gold. In 2018 with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, he completed a four-year project conducting the first-ever performances in Hong Kong of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, which have been recorded and released on Naxos Records as individual recordings as well as a complete set. His highly praised performances of Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger and Parsifal, the latter of which earned Jaap van Zweden the prestigious Edison Award for Best Opera Recording in 2012, are available on CD/DVD.
Born in Amsterdam, Jaap van Zweden was appointed at age nineteen as the youngest-ever concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He began his conducting career nearly twenty years later in 1996. He remains Honorary Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic where he served as Chief Conductor from 2005-2013, served as Chief Conductor of the Royal Flanders Orchestra from 2008-11, and was Music Director from 2008-2018 of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra where he currently holds the title Conductor Laureate. Van Zweden was named Musical America’s 2012 Conductor of the Year and was the subject of an October 2018 CBS 60 Minutes profile. Recently, he was awarded the prestigious 2020 Concertgebouw Prize, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic under Jaap van Zweden’s leadership was named Gramophone’s 2019 Orchestra of the Year.
In 1997, Jaap van Zweden and his wife Aaltje established the Papageno Foundation, the objective being to support families of children with autism. Now, over 20 years later, the Foundation has grown into a multi-faceted organization which, through various initiatives and activities, focuses on the development of children and young adults with autism. The Foundation provides in-home music therapy to children through a national network of qualified music therapists in the Netherlands; opened the Papageno House in August 2015 (with Her Majesty Queen Maxima in attendance) for young adults with autism to live, work and participate in the community; created a research center at the Papageno House for early diagnosis and treatment of autism and for analyzing the effects of music therapy on autism; develops funding opportunities to support autism programs; and launched the app, TEAMPapageno, which allows children with autism to communicate with each other through music composition.
“Christian Zacharias conducted without a baton, but his gestures – painting with arms, hands and fingers – was so inspiring, structuring the wonderful music that was created.”
Christian Zacharias is a narrator among the conductors and pianists of his generation. In each of his elaborate, detailed and clearly articulated interpretations, it’s clear what he means: Zacharias is interested in what lies behind the notes.
With a unique combination of integrity and individuality, brilliant linguistic expressiveness, deep musical understanding and a sure artistic instinct, paired with his charismatic and engaging artistic personality, Christian Zacharias has established himself not only as a world-class pianist and conductor, but also as a musical thinker. Numerous acclaimed concerts with the world’s best orchestras and outstanding conductors as well as multiple honors and recordings characterize his international career.
Since the 2017/18 season, Christian Zacharias holds the position of Principal Guest Conductor of the Orquesta y Coro de la Comunidad de Madrid, and from 2020 will hold the same position with the Orquestra Sinfonica Do Porto Casa da Musica, and was named Honorary Conductor of the George Enescu Philharmonic in Bucharest.
In general, the Classical-Romantic repertoire builds an important musical focus, as shown in return engagements with the Frankfurt Opera and Museum Orchestra, the Orchester Philharmonique Monte Carlo, or the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiano in Lugano. Zacharias gladly presents more modern works in his programs, such as works from Schoenberg and Bruckner.
On the occasion of his 70th birthday, Christian Zacharias will give a few last piano recitals in the musical centers of Europe, for example in Paris, London and Rome.
Zacharias‘ longtime musical partners include the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Basel Chamber Orchestra, Berlin Konzerthausorchester and the Bamberger Symphoniker. He’s also developed a special love of opera and has directed productions of Mozart’s La Clemenza the Tito and The Marriage of Figaro, as well as Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène. The production of Nicolai’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, which he conducted at the Opéra Royal de Wallonie in Liège, was awarded the Prix de l’Europe Francophone 2014 by the Association Professionnelle de la Critique Théâtre, Musique et Danse in Paris.
Since 1990, various films have also been produced featuring Christian Zacharias: Domenico Scarlatti in Seville, Robert Schumann – the Poet Speaks (both for INA, Paris), Zwischen Bühne und Künstlerzimmer (for WDR-arte), De B comme Beethoven à Z comme Zacharias (for RTS, Switzerland) as well as the complete Beethoven piano concertos (for SSR-arte).
His piano lectures on topics such as Why does Schubert sound like Schubert? or Haydn: A Creation from Nothing? offer his audiences impressive insights.
The musical work of Christian Zacharias has been honored many times, for example with the Midem Classical Award Artist of the Year 2007, the honorable award Officier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French state and a tribute from Romania for his services to culture. In addition, Christian Zacharias was appointed a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in 2016, and in 2017 received an honorary doctorate from the University of Gothenburg.
Numerous internationally acclaimed recordings were made during his time as Principal Conductor of the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra. Particularly noteworthy are the recordings of the complete Mozart piano concertos – awarded the Diapason d’Or, Choc du Monde de la Musique and ECHO Klassik – as well as the complete Schumann symphonies.
Since 2015, Christian Zacharias is chairman of the jury of the Clara Haskil Competition, and in 2018 president of the jury of the Geza Anda Competition where he also conducted the final concert.
Paul McCreesh has guest conducted many of the major orchestras and choirs across the globe, including most recently the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Bergen Philharmonic, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, Verbier Festival orchestras, and Berlin Konzerthausorchester. McCreesh also enjoys regular and ongoing collaborations with Saint Paul and Basel Chamber Orchestras.
In 2019/20, he conducted Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 2 and excerpts from Schubert’s Rosamunde with the New Japan Philharmonic, Haydn’s Creation with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Handel’s Messiah with the Casa da Música Baroque Orchestra & Choir, Haydn’s London Symphony & Beethoven’s C Major Mass with Filharmonia Poznanska, with whom he conducts again this season.
In the previous season, he conducted works by Elgar, Haydn and Brahms with the Kammerakademie Potsdam, a programme of Elgar, Britten and Mendelssohn with the Bamberger Symphoniker, he returned to the Filharmonia Poznanska for some Rossini and Britten, and conducted performances with the MDR Sinfonieorchester at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and the Basel Chamber Orchestra.
From 2013-2016 he was Principal Conductor and Artistic Adviser of the Gulbenkian Orchestra (Lisbon) with whom he conducted a wide range of music from the classical period through to the nineteenth and twentieth century, focusing in particular on symphonic repertoire, oratorio and opera in concert, working closely with the world-renowned Gulbenkian Choir.
McCreesh has established a strong reputation in the opera house and has conducted productions at the Teatro Real Madrid, Royal Danish Opera, Opera Comique, Vlaamse Opera and at the Verbier Festival, and most recently he conducted Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Bergen Opera, and returned to Vlaamse Opera for a production of Idomeneo.
In 2011, McCreesh launched his own record label, Winged Lion, in collaboration with the Gabrieli Consort & Players, Signum Classics and the Wratislavia Cantans Festival, where he was Artistic Director between 2006 and 2012. To date they have made seven recordings, most recently Haydn The Seasons, released in spring 2017 and lauded by critics: “the communal sense of joy is infectious” (Financial Times) and “Glorious” (Guardian).