Maestro quits job ‘to spend more family time’
mainThe Singapore Symphony have announced the resignation of Lan Sui, effective January 2019. Lan Shui has been music director in Singapore for 20 years, raising the orchestra to international prominence. He is also chief conductor of the Copenhagen Phil, some distance away.
In a personal announcement to members of the orchestra, he said that with the birth of his second son in June 2016 in Singapore, he wanted to spend more time with his wife and two children (press release).
Lan Shui has created a first class orchestra that now is resident in the fine and relatively new Esplanade Concert Hall, far better than Hong Kong’s very poor Cultural Centre Concert Hall. I hope the musicians will be given a major say in who the next MD is to be. In all sorts of ways there has always been great rivalry between Singapore and Hong Kong. With the Hong Kong Philharmonic being led by Jaap van Zweden for at least another 5 years, I hope Singapore will search carefully for a successor.