Matthias Bamert
Conductor Matthias
Bamert will be Associate Guest Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
from September 2001. He was Principal Guest Conductor of the Scottish National
Orchestra and Director of the Glasgow contemporary music festival Musica Nova
from 1985-90. Director of the Luzern Festival 1992-98, he was responsible for
the opening of a new concert hall, instituted a new Easter Festival and piano
festival, and vastly increased the festival’s activities.
Music Director of the London Mozart Players for seven years, he has masterminded
a series of recordings of works by "Contemporaries of Mozart" (over 50
symphonies). In the Summer of 1999 he took the orchestra to the BBC Proms, to
Vienna and to the Luzern Festival, with a return tour of Japan in January 2000.
He also works regularly with The Philharmonia, The London Philharmonic, Royal
Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, City of Birmingham
Symphony, and appears annually at the London Proms.
Bamert spends several weeks of every season in North America (Los Angeles
Philharmonic, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Houston, Montreal). He goes to the NHK
Symphony later this season, and is a regular guest in Australia (Sydney,
Melbourne, Perth), New Zealand and Hong Kong. He has conducted orchestras such
as the Orchestre de Paris, Strasbourg Philharmonic, Salzburg Mozarteum
Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Cologne
Radio, Oslo Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony, Barcelona Opera. Forthcoming
European engagements include the Berlin Symphony, St Petersburg Philharmonic and
Royal Philharmonic.
Born in Switzerland, and Music Director of the Swiss Radio Orchestra in Basel
from 1977-1983, he has been resident in London since 1987. However his
conducting career began in North America as an apprentice to George Szell and
later as Assistant Conductor to Leopold Stokowski, and Resident Conductor of the
Cleveland Orchestra under Lorin Maazel.
Bamert has made over 50 discs, many of them with Chandos Records, including
repertoire as diverse as Mozart’s contemporaries, Parry symphonies, Frank
Martin, Roberto Gerhard, 19th century Dutch composers, Korngold, Dohnanyi and
Stokowski transcriptions of Bach, Mussorgsky and Wagner.