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Matthias Bamert, conductor

Biography

Matthias Bamert is a conductor who defies categorisation. He has been described in the international press as urbane, elegant, stylish, dynamic, sensitive, incisive, full-blooded, impassioned, ebullient, enthusiastic, sensational. "In the age of the specialist, Bamert can turn his hand to anything and do it well" (Financial Times).

Bamert is Associate Guest Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with whom he conducts subscription concerts at the Royal Festival Hall in London as well as tours in the UK and abroad; these have recently included concerts in Madrid, in France and at the Lucerne Festival and the contemporary music festival in Basel, the 2001 Europäischer Musikmonat, of which Bamert was Intendant.

Principal Guest Conductor of the Scottish National Orchestra and Director of the Glasgow contemporary music festival Musica Nova from 1985-90, Bamert became known for his innovative programming and has conducted the world premieres of works by many composers such as Takemitsu, Casken, Macmillan and Rihm. His gift for imaginative programming came to the fore during his tenure as Director of the Lucerne Festival (1992-98), when he was also responsible for the opening of a new concert hall, instituted a new Easter Festival, a piano festival, expanded the programme and increased the festival’s activities several times over.

Music Director of the London Mozart Players for seven years, he has masterminded a hugely successful series of recordings of works by "Contemporaries of Mozart" which has already exceeded 50 symphonies. In 1999, the orchestra’s 50th anniversary year, he conducted them at the BBC Proms, inVienna and at the Lucerne Festival and returned with them to Japan in January 2000. He has worked frequently in the concert hall and studio with such orchestras as the Philharmonia, the London Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, appears regularly at the London Proms, and often appears with orchestras outside London such as the BBC Philharmonic and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

Bamert has one of the busiest international touring schedules of any conductor. He spends several weeks of every season in North America (Los Angeles Philharmonic, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Houston, Montreal), and is a regular guest in Japan (NHK Symphony, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia (including Sydney and Melbourne); in January 2003 he takes up a position as Principal Conductor of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra (Perth), where he will conduct 6 weeks a season. He has guest-conducted extensively in Europe with orchestras such as the Orchestre de Paris, Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Residentie Orkest The Hague, Cologne Radio, Berlin Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic, St Petersburg Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony, Barcelona Opera, Strasbourg Philharmonic.

Born in Switzerland, and Music Director of the Swiss Radio Orchestra in Basel from 1977-1983, he has been resident in London since 1987. However his conducting career began in North America as an apprentice to George Szell and later as Assistant Conductor to Leopold Stokowski, and Resident Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra under Lorin Maazel. This legacy lives on in his hugely popular recordings for Chandos with the BBC Philharmonic of Stokowski’s arrangements of Bach, Wagner and Mussorgsky.

A prolific recording artist, Bamert has made over 60 discs, many of which have won international prizes, and he continues to record extensively with Chandos Records, in a wide repertoire – Mozart’s contemporaries with the London Mozart Players, Parry (the complete symphonies) and Frank Martin (5 discs) with the London Philharmonic, the symphonies of Roberto Gerhard with the BBC Symphony, Dutch composers with the Residentie Orchestra, and the Stokowski transcriptions, Korngold and Dohnanyi with the BBC Philharmonic.

Matthias Bamert appears by arrangement with Intermusica Artists’ Management Ltd.

November 2002/564 words

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