Kent Nagano

Kent Nagano is considered one of the outstanding conductors for both operatic and orchestral repertoire. He has been General Music Director of the Hamburg State Opera and Chief Conductor of the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg since September 2015. In addition, he is very committed as Artistic Director of the Wagner Readings with Concerto Köln and the Dresden Festival Orchestra, and as patron of the Herrenchiemsee Festival. In 2006 he was appointed Honorary Conductor of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, in 2019 of Concerto Köln and in 2021 of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal

The 2022/23 season in Hamburg began for Kent Nagano with two open-air concerts at the Rathausmarkt. October at the Hamburg State Opera holds a new production of Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer in a staging by Michael Thalheimer. This will be followed by revivals of Beethoven's Fidelio, Wagner's Tannhäuser, Strauss' Elektra and Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann, as well as in January 2023 the premiere of the new production of Schostakowitsch’s Lady Macbeth von Mzensk in a production by Angelina Nikonova and in May 2023 the premiere of the new production of Salvatore Sciarrino's Venere e Adone in a production by George Delnon. With the Philharmonic State Orchestra, he will open the 2023 International Music Festival Hamburg with a new work by U.S. conductor Sean Shepard and Beethoven's Symphony No. 8. Furthermore, during the season he conducts concerts at the Elbphilharmonie with works by Brahms, Haydn and Mahler, among others, and again Jörg Widmann's oratorio ARCHE, which was premiered in 2017 as part of the opening festival of the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, with the Children's and Youth Choir of the Hamburg State Opera, the Alsterspatzen, the Audi Youth Choir Academy and renowned soloists.

Kent Nagano's past years in Hamburg include opera productions such as Les Troyens, Lulu, the world premiere of Stilles Meer and German premiere of Lessons in Love and Violence, the "Philharmonische Akademie" at St. Michaelis, open-air concerts at the Rathausmarkt and the world premiere of Pascal Dusapin's work Waves for organ and orchestra at the Elbphilharmonie. Orchestral tours with the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg in the past years have taken Kent Nagano to Japan, Spain and South America.

As a much sought-after guest conductor, Kent Nagano has worked with the world's leading international orchestras, including the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique Radio France, the Orchestre de l’Opéra national in Paris, the Chicago and Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Wiener Symphoniker. Special projects were the productions of Wagner's Das Rheingold with Concerto Köln and the Bernstein opera A
quiet place at the Paris Opera.
His operatic work has included Dusapin‘s Il viaggio, dante at the Festival d‘Aix-en-Provence, Hindemith's Cardillac and Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites at the Opéra National de Paris and Henze’s The Bassarids and the premiere of Saariaho's L’amour de loin at the Salzburg Festival. Other world premieres he has conducted include Bernstein's A White House Cantata and the operas Alice in Wonderland by Unsuk Chin, Three Sisters by Peter Eötvös and The Death of Klinghoffer and El Niño by John Adams.

Appearances in 2022/23 include the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, the Tonhalle in Zurich, the Vienna Musikverein, the Philharmonie in Paris and the Isarphilharmonie in Munich, among others. In addition, Kent Nagano will conduct the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester in Berlin and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal.

A highlight of Kent Nagano's collaboration with the OSM as Music Director from 2006 to 2020 included the inauguration of the orchestra’s new concert hall La Maison Symphonique in September 2011, performances of the complete cycles of Beethoven and Mahler symphonies, Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, concert versions of Wagner's Tannhäuser, Tristan und Isolde and Das Rheingold, Honegger's Jeanne d'Arc au Bücher, and Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise. Tours have taken Nagano and the orchestra to Canada including the Northern Territories, Japan, South Korea, Europe (latest 2019), South America and the USA. In July 2018, Kent Nagano conducted Krzysztof Penderecki’s St. Luke Passion with the OSM on the occasion of the Salzburg Festival opening concert.
His recordings with the OSM on Sony Classical/Analekta include Mahler’s Orchestral Songs with Christian Gerhaher in 2013 and a complete recording of all of Beethoven’s symphonies in 2015. Decca released a recording of the North American premiere of L'Aiglon, a rarely performed opera by Honegger and Ibert in 2016, conducted by Nagano in 2015. Further releases by Decca are Danse Macabre with works by Dukas, Saint-Saens, Ives and others in 2016 and a recording of Bernstein's A quiet place in 2018 on the occasion of the composer's 100th birthday. John Adams' Common tones in simple time & harmony (Decca) was released in 2019, the Lukas Passion by Penderecki (BIS) and works by Ginastera, Bernstein and Moussa (Analekta) in 2020.

At the Bayerische Staatsoper, where he was General Music Director from 2006 to 2013, Kent Nagano commissioned new operas such as Babylon by Jörg Widmann, Das Gehege by Wolfgang Rihm and Alice in Wonderland by Unsuk Chin. New productions included Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina, Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos and Die Frau ohne Schatten, Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmelites, Messiaen’s Saint François d'Assise, Berg’s Wozzeck, George Benjamin's Written on skin and Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. Tours took Nagano and the Bavarian State Orchestra through Europe and Japan. In addition to Bruckner's Symphonies Nos. 4 and 7 (Sony), Kent Nagano has released several opera performances with the Bavarian State Orchestra on DVD: Unsuk Chin's opera Alice in Wonderland (2008) and Mussorgsky's Chowanschtschina (2009) with unitel classica/medici arts, Dialogue des Carmélites with Bel Air Classiques (2011) and Lohengrin (2010) with Decca.

Another very important period in Nagano’s career was his time as Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin from 2000-2006. He performed Schönberg’s Moses und Aron with the orchestra (in collaboration with Los Angeles Opera), and took them to the Salzburg Festival to perform both Zemlinsky’s Der König Kandaules and Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten as well as to the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden with Parsifal and Lohengrin in productions by Nikolaus Lehnhoff. Recordings with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin for Harmonia Mundi include repertoire as diverse as Bernstein’s Mass, Bruckner’s Symphonies Nos. 3 & 6, Beethoven’s Christus am Ölberge, Wolf’s Mörike-Lieder, Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, Schönberg’s Die Jakobsleiter and Friede auf Erden, as well as Brahms’s Symphony No. 4 and Schönberg’s Variationen für Orchester Op. 31. In June 2006, at the end of his tenure with the orchestra, Kent Nagano was given the title Honorary Conductor by members of the orchestra, only the second recipient of this honour in their 60-year history. To this day he maintains a close friendship with the orchestra.
In October 2019, Kent Nagano and Mari Kodama expanded their joint recordings of Beethoven's works for piano and orchestra with Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 0 E-flat Major WoO 4, a nearly unknown youthful work by the composer, and his Rondo for Piano and Orchestra WoO 6 with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. The complete edition of Beethoven’s piano concerti was released on the Berlin Classics label.

Nagano has worked with labels such as BIS, Decca, Sony Classical, FARAO Classics and Analekta for many years, but he has also recorded CDs with Berlin Classics, Erato, Teldec, Pentatone, Deutsche Grammophon and Harmonia Mundi. He was awarded Grammys for his recordings of Busoni’s Doktor Faust with Opéra National de Lyon, Prokofjew’s Peter and the Wolf with the Russian National Orchestra and Saariaho’s L’amour de Loin with the Deutsches Symphonieorchester Berlin.

To celebrate Kent Nagano's 70th birthday in 2021, a 3-CD box set of works by Olivier Messiaen was released in October on the BR Klassik label. The release includes live recordings of the works Poèmes pour Mi, Chronochromie and La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ from concerts with Kent Nagano and the Symphonieorchester und Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, demonstrating Nagano's close familiarity with Messiaen's musical language in a special way.

In September 2021, Kent Nagano published his second book with Berlin Verlag. In "10 Lessons of my Life", he recalls ten very personal encounters in his life from which he learned important lessons, not only for his career. Among them are the Icelandic pop artist Björk, Frank Zappa, Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez and the Nobel Prize winner in physics Donald Glaser.
In 2015 Kent Nagano published "Erwarten Sie Wunder!" also in Berlin Verlag, a passionate appeal for the relevance of classical music in today's world. In 2019 the book was published in English by the Canadian McGill-Queen's University Press under the title ″Classical Music - Expect the Unexpected" and in 2015 under "Sonnez, merveilles!" in French by Éditions du Boréal.

Born in California, Nagano maintains close connections with his home state and was Music Director of the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra from 1978-2009. His first major successes came with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1984, when Messiaen appointed him assistant to conductor Seiji Ozawa for the premiere of his opera Saint François d'Assise. Nagano’s success in America led to European appointments: Music Director of Opéra National de Lyon (1988-1998) and Music Director of the Hallé Orchestra (1991-2000). Kent Nagano became the first Music Director of Los Angeles Opera in 2003 having already held the position of Principal Conductor for two years.

Kent Nagano was awarded an honorary doctorate from McGill University in Montréal in 2005, an honorary doctorate from the Université de Montréal in 2006, and an honorary doctorate from San Francisco State University in 2018.

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Sarah Wegener

“Wegener’s ability cannot be disputed. The placement of her voice is flawless, she has the complete range of ambitious tone colour, superb timbre that still remains smooth even at a high volume, and perfect legato.” Neue Zürcher Zeitung

Sarah Wegener approaches every role with intensity, as if it were chamber music. She enthrals listeners with the richness and warmth of her voice, for example in performances of Mahler’s 8th Symphony under Eliahu Inbal in Hamburg and Kent Nagano in Montreal, as well as in her War and Peace programme shaped around works by Handel and Purcell, which she recently presented at the SWR Schwetzingen Festival. Her “marvellously radiant voice, as powerful as it is rich in colour” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) marks her out as a Lieder singer of the highest order, as shown on her highly-praised current CD Into the Deepest Sea. On the opera stage, she made successful debuts at the Royal Opera House in London and the Deutsche Oper Berlin in Georg Friedrich Haas’ Morgen und Abend.
Her remarkable versatility has ensured long-standing collaborations with her musical partners, such as the conductors Kent Nagano, Emilio Pomàrico, Peter Rundel, Tonu Kaljuste, Heinz Holliger and Frieder Bernius. Concerts and recitals have taken her to the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, the Rheingau Music Festival, the RuhrTriennale and the Handel Festival Halle, as well as the Alte Oper Frankfurt, the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Tonhalle Zürich, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Philharmonie Köln, the Casa da Música Porto and the Bozar in Brussels. She has sung leading opera roles at the Wiener Festwochen, the Theater Bonn and the Staatstheater Saarbrücken.
Highly regarded as a performer of both classical and romantic repertoire, as well as contemporary compositions, Sarah Wegener recently sang Dvořak’s Stabat Mater and Haydn’s Sieben letzte Worte (Philippe Herreweghe, Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, Collegium Vocale Gent), Hans Werner Henze’s Floß der Medusa (Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Cornelius Meister) and, in a sensational concert in Graz, Strauss‘ Vier letzte Lieder. She has given the premiere of numerous works by Georg Friedrich Haas, including the opera Bluthaus, for which she was chosen as Singer of the Year in 2010 by Opernwelt magazine. With the NDR Symphony Orchestra under Thomas Hengelbrock she performed Dunkle Saiten by Jörg Widmann, who also dedicated the solo part in his work Labyrinth III to her; a recording of the work with the WDR Symphony Orchestra was released in summer 2018.
Sarah Wegener’s discography includes recordings of Korngold’s Die stumme Serenade, Schubert’s Lazarus and Mozart’s C minor Mass as well as Fauré’s Pélleas et Mélisande and Rossini’s Petite Messe solennelle.Into the Deepest Sea, her first Lieder recording with the pianist Götz Payer, was released in November 2017 on CAvi-music.

Following her double bass studies, the British-German soprano studied singing with Prof. Jaeger-Böhm in Stuttgart and took part in masterclasses with Dame Gwyneth Jones and Renée Morloc.

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Thomas E. Bauer

Thomas E. Bauer is one of the most fascinating vocal artists of our time. Reviewers of his numerous orchestral concerts rave about the “sheer virile force” that comes with “an unsusually precise diction, emotional intensity and rare beauty in his baritonal sound” (Opernglas).
Critics and audiences around the world agree: Thomas E. Bauer is one of the most fascinating vocal artists of our time. Reviewers of his numerous orchestral concerts rave about the “sheer virile force” that comes with “an unsusually precise diction, emotional intensity and rare beauty in his baritonal sound” (Opernglas).
As a concert vocalist, Mr. Bauer made recent guest appearances at Beethovenfest Bonn, singing Beethoven’s cycle An die ferne Geliebte, with the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra, at the Musik Podium Festival in Stuttgart in Mendelssohn’s Paulus, with Chorwerk Ruhr, Ensemble Pygmalion, and Anima Eterna. The Palais des Beaux-Arts BOZAR in Brussels featured Thomas E. Bauer as Artist-in-Residence for a series of concerts. Mr. Bauer has appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Bernard Haitink, Concentus Musicus under Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the Filarmonica della Scala under Zubin Mehta, Leipzig Gewandhaus under Herbert Blomstedt and Riccardo Chailly, the National Symphony in Washington, DC, and the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra. He has collaborated with Sir Roger Norrington, Iván Fischer, and Sir John Eliot Gardiner, among other eminent conductors. Recently, under the baton of Ingo Metzmacher, he appeared in Schubert’s Lazarus at the Salzburg Festival as well as in Schoenberg’s Jakobsleiter at the Berlin Philharmonie, and sang the world première of Jörg Widmann’s oratorio ARCHE conducted by Kent Nagano for the inauguration of Hamburg’s spectacular new Elbphilharmonie (released in 2018 on ECM).
Thomas E. Bauer also enjoys considerable success in the Lied genre: He performs frequently with fortepiano specialist Jos van Immerseel and with pianist and composer Kit Armstrong, with whom he has given a series of recitals featuring Armstrong’s Bach transcriptions, including at the Berlin Konzerthaus and Bavarian Radio in Munich. On the operatic stage, Thomas Bauer’s recent performance in Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten (Alvis Hermanis/Ingo Metzmacher) at La Scala in Milan was warmly received. He has sung several world premières of operas, and was awarded the prestigious Schneider-Schott Music Prize. He also collaborates closely with the renowned Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki.
Thomas E. Bauer’s CD productions have received a number of prestigious awards. His latest award-winning releases include Jörg Widmann’s ARCHE (Nagano/Hamburg Philharmonic, on ECM, 2018) and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio (Otto/Mainz Bach Orchestra, on Naxos, 2018).
Thomas E. Bauer received his earliest musical training as a member of the legendary Regensburg Domspatzen (Cathedral Choir) and went to study voice at the University of Music and Theatre in Munich. Thomas is also the initiator of the award-winning Konzerthaus project in the Bavarian Forest village of Blaibach, which opened in 2014 and has won international attention for its outstanding architecture and the stunning quality of concerts held in this remote region of Bavaria.

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Iveta Apkalna

Since Iveta Apkalna’s debut with the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of Claudio Abbado in 2007 she has performed with a number of the world’s top orchestras in Europe’s, North America’s and China’s most renowned concert venues.

Iveta Apkalna has served as the titular organist of the Klais organ at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Germany since 2017. In October 2018 she inaugurated the new Klais organ at the opening concerts of the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts in Taiwan. Since 2019 Ms. Apkalna has been "Artist in Residence" of the Konzertkirche Neubrandenburg, whose instrument was developed in 2017 by the Berlin organ manufacturer Karl Schuke and the Bonn organ builder Johannes Klais in collaboration with Iveta Apkalna. At the Konzertkirche Neubrandenburg she recorded her most recent CD "Triptychon" with works by Vasks, Bach and Liszt for Berlin Classics. The 2021-2022 season marks the beginning of Iveta Apkalna's three-year residency at the Konzerthaus Berlin. Furthermore, she makes her debut with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic.

Iveta Apkalna is dedicated to contemporary music and performs works by Naji Hakim, Ēriks Ešenvalds, Arturs Maskats or Thierry Escaich.

She was appointed cultural ambassador of Latvia and became the first organist to receive the title of “Best Performing Artist” award at the 2005 ECHO Klassik. In 2018 and 2020 she received the “Latvian Grand Music Award”, the most prestigious award in music in Latvia and was awarded the “Order of the Three Stars”, the highest civilian order awarded for meritorious service to Latvia by the state president.

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Solist des Knabenchores Chorakademie Dortmund

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Alsterspatzen – Kinder- und Jugendchor der Hamburgischen Staatsoper

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Audi Jugendchorakademie

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Chor der Hamburgischen Staatsoper

The chorus members appear on stage at the Hamburg State Opera in a different role almost every night. From one day to the next, they might be sailors, pilgrims or conspirators, then courtiers, hunters, the deranged or the imprisoned. In the role of crusaders in I Lombardi alla prima Crociata they travel to Jerusalem, other nights they are invited to Madama Butterfly's marriage or acclaim Prince Igor. The ladies and gentlemen of the opera chorus demonstrate their artistic prowess, their flexibility, and their love of the stage in every performance.

With a membership around 70, the chorus of the Hamburg State Opera has been one of the world’s best opera choruses for many years. The varied repertoire – almost always in the original language – is multifaceted and includes baroque operas and dramatic operas, major works by Verdi and Wagner as well as contemporary pieces. At the start of the 2013/14 season, Eberhard Friedrich took over the post of Chorus Master.

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Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg

The Philharmonic State Orchestra is Hamburg’s largest and oldest orchestra, looking back on many years of musical history. When the “Philharmonic Orchestra” and the “Orchestra of the Hamburg Municipal Theatre” merged in 1934, two tradition-steeped orchestras combined. Philharmonic concerts have been performed in Hamburg since 1828, artists such as Clara Schumann, Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms being regular guests of the Philharmonic Society. The history of the opera company goes back even further: Hamburg has been home to musical theatre since 1678, even if a regular opera or theatre orchestra was only formed later. To this day, the Philharmonic State Orchestra has embodied the sound of the Hansa City, a concert and opera orchestra in one.

During its long history, the orchestra encountered great artist personalities. Apart from composers of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, such as Telemann, Tchaikovsky, Strauss, Mahler, Prokofiev and Stravinsky, since the 20th century chief conductors such as Karl Muck, Joseph Keilberth, Eugen Jochum, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Horst Stein, Aldo Ceccato, Christoph von Dohnányi, Gerd Albrecht, Ingo Metzmacher and Simone Young have shaped the orchestra’s sound. Renowned conductors of the pre-war era such as Otto Klemperer, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Bruno Walter, Karl Böhm and Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt gave brilliant performances, as did outstanding conductors of our times: suffice it to mention Christian Thielemann, Semyon Bychkov, Kirill Petrenko, Sir Neville Marriner, Valery Gergiev and Sir Roger Norrington.

Starting with the 2015/2016 season, Kent Nagano has taken on the position of Hamburg’s General Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Philharmonic State Orchestra and the Hamburg State Opera. In his first season Kent Nagano initiated a new project, the Philharmonic Academy, focusing on experimentation and chamber music. In 2016 Nagano and the Philharmonic undertook a successful three-week concert tour in South America, a tour of Spain followed in 2019. Since 2017 Kent Nagano and the Philharmonic State Orchestra have continued the traditional Philharmonic Concerts at the new Elbphilharmonie, for which they commissioned Jörg Widmann to compose the oratorio ARCHE, which was given its world premiere during the hall’s opening festivities. The concert recording has been released at ECM.

The Philharmonic State Orchestra offers approximately 35 concerts per season and performs more than 240 performances per year at the Hamburg State Opera and the Hamburg Ballet John Neumeier, making it Hamburg’s busiest orchestra. The stylistic bandwidth covered by the 140 musicians, ranging from historically informed performance practice to contemporary works and including concert, opera and ballet repertoire, is unique throughout Germany. Chamber Music has a long tradition at the Philharmonic State Orchestra: what began in 1929 with a concert series for chamber orchestra has been continued since 1968 by a series of chamber music only.

In 2008 Simone Young and the Philharmonic State Orchestra won the Brahms Award of the Schleswig-Holstein Brahms Society. The orchestra has recorded the complete Ring by Wagner as well as the complete symphonies of Johannes Brahms and Anton Bruckner – the latter in the rarely-performed original versions – as well as works by Mahler, Hindemith and Berg, and has released DVDs of opera and ballet productions by Hosokawa, Offenbach, Reimann, Auerbach, J.S. Bach, Puccini, Poulenc and Weber.

The members of the Philharmonic State Orchestra feel equally beholden to Hamburg’s musical tradition and responsible for the city’s artistic future. Since 1978 the musicians have been participating in education programmes in Hamburg’s schools. Today, the orchestra maintains a broad education programme, including school and kindergarten visits, patronage for music projects, introductory events for children and family concerts. The orchestra’s own academy prepares young musicians for their professional careers. The Philharmonic’s musicians thereby make an equally enjoyable and valuable contribution to tomorrow’s music education in the music metropolis of Hamburg.

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