Welcome to the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic

Conductors Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic

On August 1 2010 Michael Schønwand has assumed the position of Chief Conductor of the Radio Chamber Philharmonic. He is the successor of Jaap van Zweden who has held this position from 2005 until 2010. As off the 2008-2009 season Philippe Herreweghe has been Principal Guest Conductor. Former Chief Conductor Frans Brüggen was named Conductor Emeritus of the Radio Chamber Philharmonic in 2007. As off the 2010/11 season Benjamin Levy has commenced assistant-conductor and James MacMillan has taken up his position of Principal Guest Conductor. 

Michael Schønwandt

Michael Schønwandt is Music Director of the Royal Orchestra and the Royal Opera in Copenhagen. He has also held posts as Chief Conductor of the Berliner Sinfonieorchester (1992-1998), Principal Guest Conductor of La Monnaie in Brussels (1984-87), Principal Guest Conductor of the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra (1987-2000), and Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Flanders Philharmonic Orchestra. As of August 1 2010 he has succeeded Jaap van Zweden as Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic.

Michael Schønwandt was born in Copenhagen in 1953. After his early musical training in piano, theory, and composition in Denmark he studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London. In 1979 he was engaged as Permanent Conductor of the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen with whom, during subsequent seasons, he conducted a wide repertoire ranging from Mozart to Ligeti. Besides he has conducted at leading opera houses around the world, including regular appearances with the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, La Monnaie in Brussels, Vienna State Opera, the Paris Opera, Nice Opera, the Stuttgart Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Cologne Opera and in Bayreuth.

Michael Schønwandt worked with orchestras in Berlin, Vienna, London, Israel, Düsseldorf, Dresden, Stuttgart, Warsaw, Geneva, Nice, Lyon, Monte Carlo, Milan, Sevilla and Helsinki, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Royal Flanders Philharmonic and the Orchestre Symphonique de la Monnaie in Brussels among many others.

Michael Schønwandt has a special interest in Danish music. He is regarded as one of the leading exponents of Carl Nielsen’s music and has recorded all his symphonies and concertos. He has also recorded the complete symphonies by Niels Gade and Christoph Weyse. His interest in contemporary music has led him to conduct many world premieres by Danish composers. Other world premieres include works by Henze, Kurtág and Ruder.
For Chandos he has made many notable recordings with the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Future plans, apart from his continuing association with the Royal Opera in Copenhagen, include performances of Die Meistersinger in Hamburg, Katya and Tristan in Stuttgart, The Cunning Little Vixen at the Paris Opéra, and concerts with the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic at the Concertgebouw, Orchestre Symphonique de la Monnaie in Brussels, the orchestra of the Staatstheater Stuttgart, Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg and the Royal Flanders Philharmonic.

Frans Brüggen

Conductor emeritus

Frans Brüggen is one of the foremost experts in the performance of eighteenth and early nineteenth century music. Brüggen studied flute, recorder and musicology in his native Amsterdam. He achieved international acclaim as a recorder player and at the age of 21, he was appointed professor at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague and later held position as Erasmus Professor at Harvard University and Regent's Professor at the University of Berkeley. Yet, as Luciano Berio wrote, he is "a musician who is not an archaeologist but a great artist." In 1981 he founded the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, which consists of sixty musicians representing nineteen countries. The orchestra assembles three times each year to tour. Members of the orchestra are specialists in eighteenth and early nineteenth century music and perform on period instruments, or on contemporary copies. The orchestra’s wide-ranging repertoire recorded for Philips Classics includes works by Purcell, Bach, Rameau, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn. Many of their recordings have received international awards.

Frans Brüggen's conducting activities in recent seasons have included collaborations with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Orchestra Sinfonica dell'Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony.

In October 1992 Frans Brüggen became the joint principal guest conductor, together with Simon Rattle, of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, with whom he recorded works by Bach and Haydn for Philips Classics. In 1997 he was the recipient of the Unesco International Music Prize.
His operatic engagements included Mozart's Mitridate, Re di Ponte, in Zürich, and Gluck's Orfeo with the Opéra de Lyon. In January 2001 he conducted a production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte at the Teatro Real in Madrid. From 1998 to 2000 he was joint principle guest conductor of the Orchestre de Paris. In December 2001 he made his debut with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducting the first three Beethoven Symphonies at the Royal Festival Hall in London.

Highlights of recent seasons find Maestro Brüggen conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, Munich Philharmonic Orchestra; Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra; the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Frans Brüggen continues extensive touring and recording activity with the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century.
 

Philippe Herreweghe

Principal guest conductor
 
Philippe Herreweghe was born in Ghent, Belgium. He studied piano at the local Conservatory before going on to study medicine and psychiatry. During his years at university, he founded the Collegium Vocale, a group that caught the attention of Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt who invited him to join them in a recording of the complete Cantatas of Bach.

Philippe Herreweghe has created several ensembles that have achieved considerable recognition and made more than sixty recordings on the Harmonia Mundi label: l’Ensemble Vocal Européen, Collegium Vocale Gent (Bach and his forerunners), la Chapelle Royale (French Baroque music), the Orchestre des Champs- Elysées (Classical and Romantic music) and the ensemble Musique Oblique.

Philippe Herreweghe has appeared as guest conductor of ensembles including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Flanders Philharmonic Orchestra.

Maestro Herreweghe served as Artistic Director of the Saintes Festival from 1982 to 2002 and has accrued diverse honors including European Musician of the Year in 1991 and Cultural Ambassador of Flanders 1993. Philippe Herreweghe was awarded the order of Officier des Arts et Lettres in 1994, named Doctor Honoris Causa of Louvain University in 1997 and appointed Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in 2003. In October of that same year he was knighted by the King of Belgium.
 

James MacMillan

James MacMillan was appointed permanent guest conductor of the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic in September 2010. He succeeds Peter Eötvös, who held the post of chief conductor of the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra from 1994 to 2005 and went on to serve as permanent guest conductor of the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic. MacMillan conducts at least three productions each season which feature his own works and other twentieth- and twenty-first-century repertoire. Like his predecessor, he brings together all the qualities of an internationally renowned conductor and composer. MacMillan is also one of the most frequently performed composers today.

Over the last few years, the ensembles of the Broadcasting Music Center have performed and recorded various works by him under his baton. The recently released BIS CD featuring recordings of Visitatio sepulchri and Sun-Dogs have won unanimous acclaim in the music press. Regular releases of new recordings are scheduled for the coming years; these include the percussion concerto Veni, veni, Emmanuel and The Confession of Isobel Gowdie. With the latter work, MacMillan acquired an international reputation in 1990. Ever since, his music has been performed by many of the world’s leading orchestras, conductors and soloists, including the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Slatkin, the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Andrew Davis, the Detroit Symphony under the direction of Neeme Järvi and the Los Angeles Philharmonic led by Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Born in 1959, MacMillan studied piano and trumpet, and began composing as a teenager. He studied music at the University of Edinburgh and composition at the University of Durham. He went on to teach at the University of Manchester for some time. Following the successful premiere of Tryst in 1990, he was appointed composer of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Between 1992 and 2002, MacMillan served as artistic director of the Philharmonia Orchestra’s Music of Today series. He is active as a conductor all over the world. From the 2000–1 season up until his appointment with the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic, MacMillan worked as both a composer and a conductor with the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester. He was made a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 2004.

 

Benjamin Levy

Assistant conductor

Benjamin Levy has been appointed assistant conductor with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic as from the 2009-2010 season.
He has received the 2008 ADAMI-Young Conductor Award. In 2005, he was awarded the Musical revelation prize by the French union of music critics.
He studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Lyon (Premier prix de Percussion) and at the Conservatoire de Paris (Analysis and Conducting) as well as at the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen (USA) with David Zinman and at the Academia Chigiana in Siena (Italy).
He has regularly been Marc Minkowski’s assistant. In this quality he worked with the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, at the Paris Opéra, with Les Musiciens du Louvre and recently at the Salzburger Festspiele.

Benjamin Levy is the founder and conductor of the Orchestre de Chambre Pelléas. He conducted this orchestra in most prestigious French concert halls: Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Théâtre du Châtelet, Cité de la Musique, MC2 - Grenoble and at the Festival de Besançon, Folle Journée de Nantes, Festival de Radio-France in Montpellier and Nomus Festival (Serbia).
During the last seasons, Benjamin was invited by the Opéra National du Rhin, Opéra National de Lyon, Dijon, Avignon and Toulon operas, Orchestre Colonne, Orchestre Symphonique et Lyrique de Nancy, Xalapa Symphony (Mexico) and the Simon Bolivar Orchestra in Caracas.

Future engagements include a new invitation by the Orchestre Symphonique et Lyrique de Nancy, a tour with the Rouen Opéra, concerts with the Orchestre National de Lorraine and Orchestre Lamoureux as well as an opera production with Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse. He will conduct the Orchestre de Chambre Pelléas in Switzerland, Opéra de Massy, Besançon and de Nationale Opera van België.