Concertgebouw unrolls its list of candidates

The orchestra has just put out its 2019-20 season.

These are the guest conductors from whom the next music director will likely be chosen.

A great many renowned guest conductors are leading the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 2019–20. Daniel Harding gets the ball rolling with Act 2 of Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde. The festive RCO Opening Night on 13 September features Franz Welser-Möst conducting works by Tchaikovsky, including the Violin Concerto with Janine Jansen as soloist. Another guest conductor featured this season is Christian Thielemann, who is returning for the first time since 2002 with Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony.

Herbert Blomstedt, for his part, will be conducting the Fourth. Mariss Jansons leads the orchestra in two programmes with works including Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra. Under the baton of Jaap van Zweden, the orchestra is performing Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps and Willem Mengelberg’s 1924 version of the Adagio and Purgatorio from Mahler’s Symphony No. 10.

Myung-whun Chung is leading the orchestra in Mahler’s Ninth Symphony on subscription concerts and the Third and Ninth Symphonies at the 2020 Mahler Festival organised by the Concertgebouw. Emmanuelle Haïm is conducting a captivating Baroque programme, and Thomas Hengelbrock is leading the orchestra in works by Handel, Rameau, Beethoven and others. Sir John Eliot Gardiner is conducting Schumann’s Szenen aus Goethes Faust. Elim Chan is leading the orchestra in a Children’s Concert, while this season’s conducting masterclass is presided over by none other than Iván Fischer (pictured right).

An extensive tour of Taiwan and Japan with conductor Paavo Järvi is planned for November.