Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider
conductor, violin
After a preparatory 2019/2020 season, during which he conducted the opening concert and led a tour of major Russian cities (February 2020), Danish conductor Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider became the seventh Music Director of the Orchestre National de Lyon (ONL) in September 2020. Two years later, his initial four-year term was extended by three additional years, running through June 2027.
Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider’s appointment to the ONL marks a major milestone in an outstanding career where the baton and the violin bow have long gone hand in hand. In addition to his close ties with the London Symphony Orchestra, he is a frequent guest with many of the world’s leading ensembles, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Dresden Staatskapelle, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Bamberg Symphony, and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. He is also establishing himself as an opera conductor: following his triumphant debut at the Semperoper Dresden with The Magic Flute, he was immediately invited back for Der Rosenkavalier. In the 2020/2021 season, he made his debut at the Royal Danish Theatre in a new production of The Magic Flute.
Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider is also one of the foremost violinists of our time and continues to maintain a busy schedule of solo and recital performances. He has recorded the great concertos of the repertoire with conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Zubin Mehta, Mariss Jansons, Riccardo Chailly, Colin Davis, and Alan Gilbert. He has also recorded the complete works for violin and piano by Brahms with Yefim Bronfman, and the complete Mozart violin concertos with the London Symphony Orchestra, which he directed from the violin — The Strad praised these recordings as “quite possibly one of the most beautiful violin sounds ever committed to disc.”
Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider performs on a 1741 Guarneri del Gesù violin, the “Kreisler”, on generous loan from the Royal Danish Theatre, made possible through the support of the Velux Foundations, the Villum Foundation, and the Knud Højgaard Foundation.