Robin Ticciati
Principal Guest Conductor
Alongside Principal Conductor Jonathan Nott and Honorary Conductor Herbert Blomstedt, from the start of the 2010/2011 season a third ‘name’ from their profession took up high office in Bamberg: Robin Ticciati assumed the post of Principal Guest Conductor to the Bamberg Symphony – Bavarian State Philharmonic Orchestra. The young maestro is much demand internationally and his career is forging ahead at frankly dizzying speed: since 2009 he has been Chief Conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and before that held similar posts with "Glyndebourne on Tour" and with the Gävle Symphony Orchestra in Sweden. From January 2014, he will be Glyndebourne Festival music director.
Robin Ticciati first appeared as guest in Bamberg in early 2005, conducting the Orchestra in Sibelius, Elgar and Walton for Bavarian Radio. It was a special moment for the young Londoner, as he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung: it turns out the Bavarian State Philharmonic was "the very first symphony orchestra I ever conducted". Debut concerts in Bamberg followed in February 2007, with Brahms’s "Haydn" Variations, Elgar’s Sea Pictures and Dvořák’s Third Symphony. Between then and now there has been a steady stream of appearances with the Bamberg Symphony, including in July 2008 his first guest appearance conducting the Orchestra abroad, in Como in Italy and in Bamberg’s twin city in Austria, Villach.
Robin Ticciati regularly conducts orchestras such as the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Rotterdam Philharmonic and the Dresden Staatskapelle. Highlights of his 2009/2010 season included his debut with the London Symphony Orchestra, his US debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and guest appearances with the Toronto Symphony, Danish National and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestras. Future engagements will take him to the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and to the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras.
The musical world is clearly mesmerized, not least by the artistic maturity and authority which, for all his youth, Robin Ticciati possesses and radiates. And more: there’s that disarming way about him, his infectious, unabashed enthusiasm for music, which captivates every member of his audience. For his first CD with the Bamberg Symphony, a co-production between Bavarian Radio and the label Tudor that appeared in early 2010, he was awarded the ECHO Klassik 2011 (category "Newcomer of the Year - Dirigat"). The second Brahms CD together has been released in 2011.
Born in London and trained as a violinist, pianist and percussionist, he turned to conducting at 15 – encouraged by Sir Colin Davis and Sir Simon Rattle, no less – when still in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. As a schoolboy at St. Paul’s in London he conducted the John Colet Singers in a multiplicity of works. In 2002, as a member National Youth Orchestra, he won the Arthur Belgin Medal for "Most Outstanding Musician of the Year" and, in 2005, was awarded a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship.
In the summer of 2006 Robin Ticciati conducted Mozart’s Il sogno di Scipione at the Salzburg Festival – the youngest conductor in the famous Festival’s history to make his debut there. The performance, fulsomely praised by critics and public alike, was videoed and later issued on DVD by Deutsche Grammophon.
Opera, alongside concert appearances, constitutes an important focus of Robin Ticciati’s work as a conductor. Opera productions for which he has been music director include Verdi’s Macbeth and Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel at Glyndebourne, a European tour of Britten’s Rape of Lucretia with Ian Bostridge and Angelika Kirchschlager as well as a performance in Japan of Salzburg’s Le nozze di Figaro with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. His debut at London’s Royal Opera House Covent Garden was in Hänsel und Gretel and he will return there with Tchaikovsky’s Evgeny Onegin and to Glyndebourne with Mozart’s Don Giovanni, while debuts at New York’s Met and Milan’s La Scala are also in his diary.
Concerts with Robin Ticciati in the 2011/2012 season
September/October 2011
23-27, 29, 30/9 and 1/10
Concerts in Erlangen, Bamberg, Graz, Bayreuth, Schweinfurt
Frank Peter Zimmermann, violin
November 2011
4, 5, 6
Concerts at the Braunschweig Classix Festival and in Bamberg
Emanuel Ax, piano
February 2012
4, 5
Concerts in Bamberg
Choir of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra