June 2010

photo: Marco Borggreve

Van Walsum Management is delighted to announce the signing for worldwide management of conductor John Nelson.

Artistic director of Soli Deo Gloria and Directeur Musicale Honoraire of the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, John recently conducted a television/DVD live recording of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the chorus of the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. Click here for more on John Nelson.

Van Walsum Management is delighted to announce the signing for worldwide management of pianist Kun Woo Paik.

Described by Gramophone as 'a player of consummate artistry, great tonal finesse and elegance’, Kun Woo Paik is considered one of the most important pianists of his generation. Click here for more on Kun Woo Paik.

Van Walsum Management is delighted to announce the signing for worldwide management of designer Barbara de Limburg.

Barbara de Limburg designs for both theatre and opera. Her work includes beautiful and imaginative sets for the Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne Festival, La Monnaie, Brussels, Saito Kinen Festival, Santa Fe Opera and Maggio Musicale. Click here for more on Barbara de Limburg.

photo: Marco Borggreve

Having been awarded the Ruhr Piano Festival Prize last year by András Schiff, Juho Pohjonen makes his début at Klavier Festival Ruhr this month, giving a recital of Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Schumann. The award was established to acknowledge outstanding piano achievement and to honour great pianists for their lifetime accomplishments. Compensation consists of a scholarship granted by the prize winner to a young pianist of his/her choice, who is invited to play a recital at the Ruhr Piano Festival the following year.

photo: Nicolas Ruel

Kent Nagano will be awarded the Wilhelm-Furtwängler prize at this year’s Beethovenfest Bonn in the autumn. The prize which was initiated in 1988 by Furtwängler’s wife Elisabeth and Ermano Sens-Grosholz and honours outstanding soloists, orchestras, conductors and ensembles of classical music life for their musical achievements. Previous prize winners include Kurt Masur, Placido Domingo, Agnes Baltsa, José Carreras, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin. Kent Nagano is a regular guest of the Beethovenfest Bonn where he has performed with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. In September, he will conduct the Bayerische Staatsorchester with a Beethoven and Bruckner programme at the festival.

photo: Kasskara - DG

Yuri Bashmet and Kent Nagano join forces this month, performing Brahms’ (arr. Berio) Sonata for Viola and Orchestra with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in its home town. The two concerts also include Webern’s Passacaglia, and Schumann’s Symphony No 2.

photo: Delahaye Photographie

Following a revival of his hugely successful La Fille du régiment at Covent Garden in May, this month sees the premiere of Laurent Pelly’s highly-anticipated new production of Massenet’s Manon at the Royal Opera House. With sets designed by Chantal Thomas and Agathe Mélinand as dramaturg, Anna Netrebko and Vittorio Grigolo head a star cast under the baton of Antonio Pappano.

photo: Marco Borggreve

After making an impressive début at English National Opera last season with Rossini's The Barber of Seville, Rory Macdonald returns to the Company to conduct a new production of Bizet’s Pearl Fishers. After the first night the Telegraph reported ‘Rory MacDonald’s conducting was admirably muscular and wholehearted, drawing fiercely impassioned playing from the orchestra’. This is Rory’s second Bizet opera this year as he conducted Carmen for Canadian Opera Company in Toronto in February.

photo: Marco Borggreve

As reported in April, Sylvain Cambreling has begun his three year tenure as Principal Conductor of the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo. He and the orchestra are joined in Tokyo this month by Nikolai Demidenko for a performance of Mussorgsky’s (arr. Ravel) Pictures at an Exhibition. Other works in the programme are by Rachmaninov, Honneger and Berlioz. Performances of the orchestra under Sylvain Cambreling continue in the 2010/2011 season with 13 concerts in Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka and Nagoya.

photo: Mats Backer

As General Music Director Designate of Staatskapelle Weimar, Stefan Solyom conducts a new production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin at the National Theatre in Weimer. Stefan takes up his post as Music Director in September. After thirteen years, Semyon Bychkov steps down as Chief Conductor of WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln. He celebrates this extraordinary tenure with two concerts of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, Schuller’s Where the World Ends and Act II from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.