Jonathan Nott
Principal Conductor
Jonathan Nott took up his post as Principal Conductor of the Bamberg Symphony – Bavarian State Philharmonic in January 2000. The artistic partnership between Nott and "his" Orchestra has won plaudits from all quarters and is watched with keen interest by the musical world – hardly surprisingly, considering the enormous success which has greeted his and the players’ appearances in Bamberg and all over the globe.
Concert tours have taken Nott and the Bamberg Symphony to Germany’s and Europe’s leading musical capitals, to international festivals in Edinburgh, Salzburg, St. Petersburg, Beijing, Lucerne and Schleswig-Holstein, to London’s Proms and on several tours of Japan, South America and the USA. "Together, I think they’ve created one of the most exciting partnerships in orchestral music", wrote the UK Guardian of Jonathan Nott and the Bavarian State Philharmonic.
In 2007 Jonathan Nott was "artiste étoile" at the Lucerne Festival, where the Bamberg Symphony also appeared as orchestra in residence. Other residencies under its Chief Conductor have taken it to the Edinburgh International Festival 2005 and, in the 2008/2009 season, to Cologne’s Philharmonie.
Further proof of the international recognition of Jonathan Nott’s artistic achievements in Bamberg is the steady stream of awards won by him and the Bamberg Symphony for their CDs, such as the MIDEM Classical Award, the International "Toblach Composing Hut" Record Prize and Gramophone magazine’s "Editor’s Choice". No less impressive is the sheer number of concerts so far – more than 450 – which the Bamberg Symphony has played under Jonathan Nott, the fourth Chef Conductor in its history. In May 2009 he extended his contract in Bamberg until 2012.
"This music needs all the energies you’ve got," emphasizes Jonathan Nott. The music he was talking about is Gustav Mahler’s but his words betray a fundamental attitude which positively leaps out at one from all his performances. An early focus of his Bamberg tenure was the Schubert Project, whose content reached well into the 21st Century; other important strands of Nott’s programming in Bamberg have been the symphonies of Beethoven and Brahms, Wagner’s music dramas, the legacy of Ligeti, the Classicism of Haydn, the Modernist circles around Stravinsky and Bartók and the music of Mahler. The premise of all Nott’s Bamberg programming, in fact, is complete parity and inclusion for both the traditional ‘greats’ and the music of our time.
Given his training, it’s also no surprise that Jonathan Nott, winner of Bavaria’s Culture Prize in 2009, should put the human voice centre-stage in his concerts, alongside the "pure" orchestral repertoire. After all, he studied not only musicology in Cambridge and conducting in London, but also singing and the flute in Manchester. He has conducted the Bamberg Symphony in concert performances of Beethoven’s Fidelio and Wagner’s Die Walküre, Das Rheingold, Siegfried and Tristan und Isolde, not to mention Ligeti’s and Verdi’s Requiems as well as Haydn’s ‘azione teatrale’ L’isola disabitata – the latter in a staged production at Bamberg’s E.T.A. Hoffmann Theatre.
He is also responsible for the Mahler cycle which since 2003 has dominated the Bamberg Symphony’s artistic work and which culminates in July 2011 with the recording of the Seventh Symphony. But Jonathan Nott’s work is not confined to the maestro’s podium: he is deeply committed to training the next generation of conductors and ever since the Bamberg Symphony’s first Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition, in 2004, he has been President of the Competition’s jury.
After a stint at Oper Frankfurt, in 1991 Jonathan Nott took up the post of First Kapellmeister at the Hessischer Staatstheater in Wiesbaden and during the 1995/1996 season was also the house’s interim Generalmusikdirektor. Throughout this period he conducted a wide spectrum of opera, ballet and other repertoire, as well as embarking on an intensive collaboration with Ensemble Modern. In 1997 Jonathan Nott joined the Luzerner Theater and took up direction of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra as Chief Conductor. In addition, from 2000 until 2003 he was director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris, founded by Pierre Boulez, and he is still regularly to be heard as its guest conductor.
During the last few years Jonathan Nott has stood at the helm of nearly all the leading symphony orchestras of Europe and the US. He has conducted the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the Vienna and Munich Philharmonic Orchestras, the Zurich Tonhalle, Leipzig Gewandhaus and NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg, the Cleveland Orchestra, the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestras, as well as the NHK Symphony Orchestra of Tokyo and the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, with which he has toured Europe. Not to mention the Berlin Philharmonic, with which Jonathan Nott recorded the complete orchestral works of Ligeti as well as the Requiem on request of Ligeti himself. The music press accorded these CDs a rapturous reception: "György Ligeti himself, no simple observer but a severe critic of interpreters, spoke in the highest terms of him as a conductor", wrote the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of Jonathan Nott in March 2010.
A fervent supporter of contemporary music, Jonathan Nott has given premieres of works by Brian Ferneyhough, Wolfgang Rihm, Helmut Lachenmann and Aribert Reimann, among others, as well as Bamberg Symphony commissions by Jörg Widmann, Bruno Mantovani, Marc-André Dalbavie and Mark-Anthony Turnage.
Under Jonathan Nott, the Bavarian State Philharmonic has recorded an impressive series of music from very different periods. These CDs, all co-productions between Bavarian Radio and the Swiss label Tudor, have garnered an enviable array of awards. They include a complete cycle of Schubert’s Symphonies, coupled with contemporary works which engage in various ways with Schubert’s music. Other notable releases include the first version of Bruckner’s Symphony No.3, Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps and Symphony in Three Movements, and a CD of works by Janáček. Of Nott’s Mahler cycle so far Symphonies Nos.1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 9 have been released.
2011/2012 Season Highlights
If not indicated otherwise, concerts are conducted by Principal Conductor Jonathan Nott.
August 2011
27
Concert at the Rheingau Musik Festival
September 2011
2, 3
Concerts at the Edinburgh International Festival
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano
10
Konzert im Concertgebouw Brügge
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano
11
Concert at the Philharmonie Köln
Márton Illés, piano
13
Concert at the Dvořák Festival Prag
Sergey Khachatryan, violin
October 2011
21
Concert at the Philharmonie Essen
Christina Landshamer, soprano
22
Concert at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden
Christina Landshamer, soprano
January 2012
15
Concert at the Konzerthaus Dortmund
1-13
Concert at the Festival de Música de Canarias in Las Palmas and Santa Cruz
Mojca Erdmann, soprano
Jinsang Lee, piano
February 2012
24
Concert at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden
Mischa Maisky, violoncello
April 2012
26
Concert at the Laeiszhalle Hamburg
Radu Lupu, piano
28
Concert at the Kuppelsaal Hannover
Radu Lupu, piano
May 2012
19-21
Concerts in New York und Long Island
Christian Zacharias, piano
July 2012
7-22
Biennale Bamberg
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
among others Così fan tutte