| The Seven Year Itch? Matthias Bamert leaves the Luzern Festival in great shape |
Matthias Bamert's hugely successful tenure as Director of the Luzern Festival (begun in 1991), during which time he brilliantly developed the Festival's artistic and financial fortunes, came to an end this summer.
After planning seven summer festivals (as well as creating the Easter Festivals and a new Piano Festival to be inaugurated this Autumn), Bamert is now looking forward to concentrating full time on his already extensive and successful conducting career. Last spring he had a tremendous success with the Houston Symphony and was immediately re-invited, and he made his second visits to the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Orchestre de Paris. Also in recent months were tours of the London Mozart Players to Spain and Switzerland, concerts with the Montreal Symphony and the London premiere of Kurt Weill's Die Propheten (his 14th BBC Promenade Concert!) with the BBC Symphony in a concert that also included Mahler's 4th Symphony. "This BBCSO performance under Matthias Bamert was both powerful and haunting" (The Times) "will be remembered as one of the highlights of this year's BBC Proms" (Financial Times). Directly after his final speeches in Luzern he returned to North America for his debut with the St Paul Chamber Orchestra. Later in the year he will conduct the Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg, the orchestra where he started his professional musical life as Principal Oboe, and where he met his wife, Susan (piccolo). The tradition he absorbed in Salzburg was one of the reasons for accepting, in 1993, the position of Music Director of the London Mozart Players, whose 50th anniversary he marks in February with a Royal Gala concert at the Festival Hall. A new commission - a concerto for chamber orchestra from John Woolrich - will be flanked by the two Mozart Symphonies that the orchestra performed at their first London concert in 1949. A continuing stream of acclaimed recordings for Chandos has recently included discs of Korngold and Dohnanyi. February also sees a new association for Bamert in the recording studio, as he travels to the Netherlands to record with the Residentie Orchestra in the Hague to lend his expertise to Dutch composers Voormolen and Hol - undoubtedly with the same success he has had here in Britain with English composers such as Hubert Parry, Patrick Hadley, etc. Bamert will continue his Dohnanyi recording project with the BBC Philharmonic and his acclaimed Contemporaries of Mozart series with the London Mozart Players, adding to an already impressive discography for Chandos Records of over 40 discs. |
