Gianandrea Noseda is stepping down after a decade as chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in Manchester.

It has been a fairly glorious time in which the Italian, a protege of Valery Gergiev’s, gave the first Beethoven cycle to be made available as a free download, pursued a strong strand of 20th century Russian music and made more than 20 commercial records for Chandos.

The orchestra showed itself to be in fine form in the Mahler cycle it shared recently with the Halle and Noseda, 46, will be wanting to devote more of his time to opera. He has been principal conductor in Turin for the past three years.

When more than a million people downloaded his interpretation of the Beethoven symphonies, I speculated in print that they might be as influential as Toscanini’s. Not for musicians, perhaps, but an awful lot of listeners around the world, from Vietnam to Mexico, have received more enlightenment from this conductor than from any other.

BBC Press release follows:

 

NOSEDA GIVES FINAL SEASON AS CHIEF CONDUCTOR

 

  • Italian maestro steps down after almost a decade of thrilling music making in Manchester. 
  • The season will recall the highlights of his time with the BBC Philharmonic, and close with a concert performance of Verdi’s Otello. 
  • A roster of visiting conductors including Gunther Herbig, Pablo Heras Casado and Juanjo Mena share the spotlight. 
  • Soloists appearing with the BBC Philharmonic this season include: Alison Balsom, Philippe Cassard, James Ehnes, Barbara Frittoli, Alban Gerhardt, Stephen Hough, Sergey Khachatryan, Katie van Kooten, Sabine Meyer and Steven Osborne.

The BBC Philharmonic announces its next season at The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester with the news that it will be Gianandrea Noseda’s last as Chief Conductor. 

 

His close association with the Orchestra will continue when he takes up the title of Conductor Laureate in September 2011, spending up to three weeks per year in Manchester.

 

Under his leadership the BBC Philharmonic has developed a visceral, inspirational quality in its music making, combined with careful attention to detail and overall structure. 

 

Gianandrea’s final season will recall some of the highlights of his tenure at the BBC Philharmonic, featuring repertoire by Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Liszt and Strauss.

 

His last concert as Chief Conductor will be Verdi’s tragic masterpiece, Otello.  Firmly stamping the Italian flavour on proceedings, he opens the season with the Overture from Verdi’s Forza del destino.

 

Noseda arrived in 2002 with an already impressive track record in interpretations of the greats of Russian music, including Shostakovich and Prokofiev. He quickly established his musical versatility, and his survey of the Beethoven Symphonies in 2005 marked him as an outstanding new talent.

 

His passion for opera and its impact in concert performance has produced memorable collaborations notably with the Mariinsky Theatre, and one of Europe’s premiere opera houses Teatro Regio in Turin, where he is Music Director.

 

His scorching performances of Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades, Strauss’ Salome and Rachmaninoff’s Francesca da Rimini will live long in the memory.

 

Gianandrea has produced a catalogue of 20 CDs with the BBC Philharmonic for Chandos, and his daring and imaginative interpretations have led to critical re-appraisals of music by Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Smetana.

 

Richard Wigley the BBC Philharmonic’s General Manager comments:  Gianandrea has forged a unique partnership with the BBC Philharmonic, and their recent defining performances of Mahler’s Sixth and Seventh symphonies are powerful proof of this. He is welcomed at the world’s finest opera houses and orchestras, and has created the same expectation of international quality for his beloved BBC Philharmonic.  His legacy of acclaimed recordings for Chandos, wonderful Proms and countless special performances here in Manchester are testament to his outstanding achievements as Chief Conductor.”  

 

Elsewhere in the season the BBC Philharmonic’s popular Chief Guest Conductor Vassily Sinaisky will present three concerts, starting with a Russian fest of music by Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky, while visionary Composer/Conductor HK ‘Nali’ Gruber will perform his show-stopping work ‘Pandemonium’ Frankenstein!!  Former Principal Conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier also returns as does Günther Herbig.

 

Two of Spain‘s exceptional talents come back this Season.  Juanjo Mena makes his debut at The Bridgewater Hall in October, conducting Steven Osborne in Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto and Bruckner’s epic Seventh Symphony.  Pablo Heras Casado follows with the Mozart Requiem and Strauss’ Four Last Songs.

 

To request a BBC Philharmonic season brochure please email philharmonic@bbc.co.uk
 
 
 
 
 
 

Gianandrea Noseda is stepping down after a decade as chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in Manchester.

It has been a fairly glorious time in which the Italian, a protege of Valery Gergiev’s, gave the first Beethoven cycle to be made available as a free download, pursued a strong strand of 20th century Russian music and made more than 20 commercial records for Chandos.

The orchestra showed itself to be in fine form in the Mahler cycle it shared recently with the Halle and Noseda, 46, will be wanting to devote more of his time to opera. He has been principal conductor in Turin for the past three years.

When more than a million people downloaded his interpretation of the Beethoven symphonies, I speculated in print that they might be as influential as Toscanini’s. Not for musicians, perhaps, but an awful lot of listeners around the world, from Vietnam to Mexico, have received more enlightenment from this conductor than from any other.

BBC Press release follows:

 

NOSEDA GIVES FINAL SEASON AS CHIEF CONDUCTOR

 

  • Italian maestro steps down after almost a decade of thrilling music making in Manchester. 
  • The season will recall the highlights of his time with the BBC Philharmonic, and close with a concert performance of Verdi’s Otello. 
  • A roster of visiting conductors including Gunther Herbig, Pablo Heras Casado and Juanjo Mena share the spotlight. 
  • Soloists appearing with the BBC Philharmonic this season include: Alison Balsom, Philippe Cassard, James Ehnes, Barbara Frittoli, Alban Gerhardt, Stephen Hough, Sergey Khachatryan, Katie van Kooten, Sabine Meyer and Steven Osborne.

The BBC Philharmonic announces its next season at The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester with the news that it will be Gianandrea Noseda’s last as Chief Conductor. 

 

His close association with the Orchestra will continue when he takes up the title of Conductor Laureate in September 2011, spending up to three weeks per year in Manchester.

 

Under his leadership the BBC Philharmonic has developed a visceral, inspirational quality in its music making, combined with careful attention to detail and overall structure. 

 

Gianandrea’s final season will recall some of the highlights of his tenure at the BBC Philharmonic, featuring repertoire by Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Liszt and Strauss.

 

His last concert as Chief Conductor will be Verdi’s tragic masterpiece, Otello.  Firmly stamping the Italian flavour on proceedings, he opens the season with the Overture from Verdi’s Forza del destino.

 

Noseda arrived in 2002 with an already impressive track record in interpretations of the greats of Russian music, including Shostakovich and Prokofiev. He quickly established his musical versatility, and his survey of the Beethoven Symphonies in 2005 marked him as an outstanding new talent.

 

His passion for opera and its impact in concert performance has produced memorable collaborations notably with the Mariinsky Theatre, and one of Europe’s premiere opera houses Teatro Regio in Turin, where he is Music Director.

 

His scorching performances of Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades, Strauss’ Salome and Rachmaninoff’s Francesca da Rimini will live long in the memory.

 

Gianandrea has produced a catalogue of 20 CDs with the BBC Philharmonic for Chandos, and his daring and imaginative interpretations have led to critical re-appraisals of music by Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Smetana.

 

Richard Wigley the BBC Philharmonic’s General Manager comments:  Gianandrea has forged a unique partnership with the BBC Philharmonic, and their recent defining performances of Mahler’s Sixth and Seventh symphonies are powerful proof of this. He is welcomed at the world’s finest opera houses and orchestras, and has created the same expectation of international quality for his beloved BBC Philharmonic.  His legacy of acclaimed recordings for Chandos, wonderful Proms and countless special performances here in Manchester are testament to his outstanding achievements as Chief Conductor.”  

 

Elsewhere in the season the BBC Philharmonic’s popular Chief Guest Conductor Vassily Sinaisky will present three concerts, starting with a Russian fest of music by Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky, while visionary Composer/Conductor HK ‘Nali’ Gruber will perform his show-stopping work ‘Pandemonium’ Frankenstein!!  Former Principal Conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier also returns as does Günther Herbig.

 

Two of Spain‘s exceptional talents come back this Season.  Juanjo Mena makes his debut at The Bridgewater Hall in October, conducting Steven Osborne in Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto and Bruckner’s epic Seventh Symphony.  Pablo Heras Casado follows with the Mozart Requiem and Strauss’ Four Last Songs.

 

To request a BBC Philharmonic season brochure please email philharmonic@bbc.co.uk
 
 
 
 
 
 

Hot out of the sacred music cauldron in Fez, I came home to the heart of the opera debate. Last night, I contemplated the future of opera on BBC Radio 3’s Night Waves with ENO artistic director John  Berry and ex-Arts Council chair Christopher Frayling. Tonight, I’m on BBC4 in a repeat of David Thompson’s excellent film Pavarotti: A Life in Seven Arias.

What hope is there for an art whose creative ferment ran out in the 1920s when Puccini and Janacek died? Since then, fewer than a dozen new operas have become popular fixtures. As a result, the art tries to reinvent itself in ever more bizarre deconstructions.

In Germany, the trend of staging arias among the trash cans has become so extreme that booing is frequent, especially at Bayreuth, and the conductor of the Komische Oper Berlin, Carl St Clair, has quit in protest.

Few other cultures go to such extremes, though Calixto Bieito managed to outrage Spain and subseqeuently half of Europe by opening Verdi’s Ballo in Maschera with the king and his court sitting on toilets, pants around their ankles. Die Fledermaus, in his Cardiff production, was – he said – ‘all about prostitution’.

At ENO, John Berry has eschewed the wilder shores of radicalism and placed many of his shows in the hands of tested theatre and film directors. Critics mostly hate these prespective-shift rereadings of classic situations but the audience, which has rejuvenated dramatically over the past 2-3 years, is generally enthusiastic. The Directors Cut is working for ENO.

What’s more, Berry is extending the repertory with works like Ligeti’s Le grand macabre, Saariaho’s L’amour de loin and Henze’s Elegy for Young Lovers. Adventure is payng off for a house that receives £10 million less than stolid Covent Garden. 

Yet I argued with John that this is not enough to bring opera back to life as a cultural compulsion. Commissioning new works and backing them to the hilt – as ENO and the Met did with John Adams and Doctor Atomic – is the essential first step. But opera also needs to engage with 21st century technology, with screens and multimedia, with interactive flexibility. What was the last technical development in the opera house? Surtitles – and they are 25 years old.

How long, in recessional bite, can we afford such extravagance? Frayling was keen to know. You can hear the discussion here.

As for Pavarotti, what we have learned since his death three years ago is not just that the big man himself is irreplaceable but that the role of Great Tenor may no longer be tenable. With Domingo on his last legs and Rolando Villazon a sad burnout, there is no king pirate on the high Cs. That era could be over. How does opera replace the black magic? You tell me…. 

Hot out of the sacred music cauldron in Fez, I came home to the heart of the opera debate. Last night, I contemplated the future of opera on BBC Radio 3’s Night Waves with ENO artistic director John  Berry and ex-Arts Council chair Christopher Frayling. Tonight, I’m on BBC4 in a repeat of David Thompson’s excellent film Pavarotti: A Life in Seven Arias.

What hope is there for an art whose creative ferment ran out in the 1920s when Puccini and Janacek died? Since then, fewer than a dozen new operas have become popular fixtures. As a result, the art tries to reinvent itself in ever more bizarre deconstructions.

In Germany, the trend of staging arias among the trash cans has become so extreme that booing is frequent, especially at Bayreuth, and the conductor of the Komische Oper Berlin, Carl St Clair, has quit in protest.

Few other cultures go to such extremes, though Calixto Bieito managed to outrage Spain and subseqeuently half of Europe by opening Verdi’s Ballo in Maschera with the king and his court sitting on toilets, pants around their ankles. Die Fledermaus, in his Cardiff production, was – he said – ‘all about prostitution’.

At ENO, John Berry has eschewed the wilder shores of radicalism and placed many of his shows in the hands of tested theatre and film directors. Critics mostly hate these prespective-shift rereadings of classic situations but the audience, which has rejuvenated dramatically over the past 2-3 years, is generally enthusiastic. The Directors Cut is working for ENO.

What’s more, Berry is extending the repertory with works like Ligeti’s Le grand macabre, Saariaho’s L’amour de loin and Henze’s Elegy for Young Lovers. Adventure is payng off for a house that receives £10 million less than stolid Covent Garden. 

Yet I argued with John that this is not enough to bring opera back to life as a cultural compulsion. Commissioning new works and backing them to the hilt – as ENO and the Met did with John Adams and Doctor Atomic – is the essential first step. But opera also needs to engage with 21st century technology, with screens and multimedia, with interactive flexibility. What was the last technical development in the opera house? Surtitles – and they are 25 years old.

How long, in recessional bite, can we afford such extravagance? Frayling was keen to know. You can hear the discussion here.

As for Pavarotti, what we have learned since his death three years ago is not just that the big man himself is irreplaceable but that the role of Great Tenor may no longer be tenable. With Domingo on his last legs and Rolando Villazon a sad burnout, there is no king pirate on the high Cs. That era could be over. How does opera replace the black magic? You tell me….