Orchestre symphonique de Montréal
Orchestras
Founded in 1934 by a group of devoted music lovers, with the backing of the Québec Government, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal is one of the major cultural organizations of the city whose name it bears with pride.
The music directors who have contributed to its growth and success are Wilfrid Pelletier, a Montrealer by birth and conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York who became the first Artistic Director of the OSM; Désiré Defauw; Igor Markevitch; Zubin Mehta, who guided the OSM from 1961 to 1967, bringing increased prestige to the Orchestra through European tours; Franz-Paul Decker; Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos; Charles Dutoit, from 1977 to 2002, with whom the OSM assumed an important place on the international stage; and, since September 2006, Kent Nagano.
The excellence of the OSM has been demonstrated in the course of 37 national and international tours. The Orchestra has toured in Asia seven times, visiting Japan on six of those, and has toured Europe on nine occasions and South America twice. The OSM has also performed at the Hollywood Bowl, as well as the Ravinia and Tanglewood festivals. Moreover, from 1982 to 2004 the Orchestra has been an almost annual visitor to Carnegie Hall, where it played to packed houses. The March 8, 2008 concert marked the Orchestra’s Carnegie Hall debut under Maestro Nagano, and they embarked on a multi-city tour of Japan and South Korea in April of that same year. This current European tour marks the Orchestra’s first visit to the continent in 10 years.
In 2006 the OSM offered a concert at the Paris Théâtre du Châtelet, its first international concert with Kent Nagano. In April 2007 the Orchestra completed its first coast-to-coast Canadian tour, placed under the direction of Kent Nagano.
The OSM has produced 95 recordings with Decca, EMI, Philips, CBC Records, and recently, a record with Analekta, earning 47 national and international awards, including two Grammys. The first OSM recording under Kent Nagano, “Beethoven: Ideals of the French Revolution” was released on the Analekta label on April 3, 2008.
SEASON 2008/2009
Kent Nagano
Music Director
Kent Nagano has established a reputation as a gifted interpreter of both the operatic and symphonic repertoire. He is officially the eighth music director of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, and the 2008-2009 season is his third with the orchestra in that capacity. In September 2006, Mr. Nagano also took over from Zubin Mehta as General Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. Highlights of the 2008-2009 season with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal include the Canadian premiere of Messiaen’s opera Saint François d’Assise. In March of 2008 the OSM and Mo. Nagano made their joint Carnegie Hall debut to great acclaim, before embarking on their first international tour together in Japan and South Korea in April of that same year.
Born in California, he has been Music Director of the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra since 1978, and will conclude his tenure there in May 2009. He will assume the title of Conductor Laureate, in addition to continuing his relationship with the organization as Artistic Director of the Berkeley Akademie, a new program dedicated to repertoire for small orchestra.
Kent Nagano’s early professional years were spent in Boston, working in the opera house and as assistant conductor to Seiji Ozawa at the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He played a key role in the world premiere of Messiaen’s opera Saint François d’Assise at the request of the composer. Mr. Nagano’s success in America led to European appointments: Music Director of the Opéra National de Lyon (1988-1998), Music Director of the Hallé Orchestra (1991-2000) and Associate Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. World premieres from these years include Bernstein’s A White House Cantata and operas by Peter Eötvös (Three Sisters), John Adams (The Death of Klinghoffer and El Niño) and Saariaho (L’amour de loin) at the Salzburg Festival.
A new and important phase of Mr. Nagano’s career opened when he became Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in 2000. With the orchestra, he has performed Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron (in collaboration with Los Angeles Opera), and he took them to the Salzburg Festival to perform both Zemlinsky’s Der König Kandaules and Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten, as well as to the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden with Parsifal (2004) and Lohengrin (2006). Parsifal, Die Gezeichneten and Lohengrin have been recorded on DVD. Recent recordings with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin for Harmonia Mundi include repertoire as diverse as Bernstein’s Mass, Bruckner’s Third and Sixth Symphonies, Beethoven’s Christus am Ölberge, Wolf Lieder, Mahler’s Eighth Symphony and Schoenberg’s Die Jakobsleiter. In June 2006, at the end of his tenure with the orchestra, he was given the title “Honorary Conductor” by members of the orchestra, only the second recipient of this honour in their 60-year history.
Kent Nagano became the first Music Director of Los Angeles Opera in 2003, having already held the position of Principal Conductor for two years. Productions there ranged from a series of Mozart operas, Idomeneo, Don Giovanni and Le Nozze di Figaro, to Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier and Die Frau ohne Schatten, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Tosca, as well as Wagner’s Lohengrin and Parsifal.
His work in other opera houses in recent seasons includes Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel (Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris), Britten’s Billy Budd (Bavarian State Opera in Munich) and Hindemith’s Cardillac (Opéra National de Paris).
As a much sought-after guest conductor, he has worked with most of the world’s finest orchestras, including the Vienna, Berlin and New York Philharmonic Orchestras and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
He has recorded for Erato, Teldec, Pentatone and Deutsche Grammophon as well as Harmonia Mundi, winning Grammy awards for his recordings of Busoni’s Doktor Faust with the Opéra National de Lyon, and Peter and the Wolf with the Russian National Orchestra. The latter features Sophia Loren narrating Peter and the Wolf, and a new piece by Jean-Pascal Beintus, Wolf Tracks, narrated by Bill Clinton and introductory remarks provided by Mikhail Gorbachev. His first recording with the OSM, an all-Beethoven double-disc including the Fifth Symphony and The General, was released by Analekta in April of 2008.
SEASON 2008/2009
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