Lorin Maazel (Music Director)

Lorin Maazel, who has conducted more than 150 orchestras in more than 5,000 operas and concerts, is the Musical Director of the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, in Valencia, Spain. He currently holds the positions of Musical Director Conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and is the Musical Director of the Arturo Toscanini Philharmonic Orchestra in Parma, Italy.

Lorin Maazel has been the musical director of the Radiophonic Symphony Orchestra of Bavaria (1993-2002) and has occupied different posts with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra of (1988-96); General Director and Conductor of the Vienna  Staatsoper (1982-84), first United States citizen  to hold this position; Musical Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra (1972-82); and Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Berlin Deutsche Opera (1965-71).  In May 2004 Maestro Maazel accepted the post as Conductor of the Arturo Toscanini Philharmonic Orchestra in Parma, an orchestra which was founded in 2001 and is composed of outstanding young European musicians. He was named honorary member of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra in 1985, and conducted the Fortieth Anniversary Celebration Concert of the State of Israel.  He is an honorary member of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Vienna and has received the Hans von Bülow Silver Medal from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

Lorin Maazel was born in Paris in 1930 but was brought up and educated in the United States.  He received his first violin class at the age of 5 and his first conducting class at the age of 7. He studied with Vladimir Bakaleinikoff and performed in public for the first time at age 8, conducting a university orchestra. In 1939, at the age of 9, he made his debut in New York at the Universal Exhibition with the Interlochen Orchestra. The same year he conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl, where he shared the programme with Leopold Stokowski. In 1941, at the age of11, Arturo Toscanini invited him to conduct the NBC Symphony.

Between the ages of 9 and 15, he conducted the principal orchestras of the United States.  When he was 17 years old he enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh to study languages, mathematics and philosophy. During his time as a student, he performed as a violinist in the Symphonic Orchestra of Pittsburgh and during the season of 1949-50 as the  Assistant  Conductor. He also organised the Pittsburgh Fine Arts Quartet . In 1951, at the age of 21, he studied baroque music in Italy thanks to a Fulbright Scholarship and two years later he made his debut as a conductor in Europe, as a substitute at the Massimo Bellini Theatre in Italy. He quickly came to be recognized as a great artist and appeared at Bayreuth in 1960 (the first US citizen to achieve this), the Boston Symphony Orchestra of in 1961, and at the Salzburg Festival in 1963.

Lorin Maazel has conducted orchestras all over Europe, Australia, North and South America, Japan, the ex-Soviet Union and at the main international festivals (Salzburg, Edinburgh and Lucerne) as well as at the Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Opera of Paris, Royal Opera House Covent Garden. He has conducted 10 New Year Concerts from Vienna as well as orchestras for the cinematographic productions of Don Giovanni, Carmen and Othello. In the year 2000 he went on a world tour on the occasion of this 70th birthday and celebrated his 100th appearance at the Salzburg Festival, conducting, Don Carlo and Falstaff.  Other highlights of recent seasons are the series of Brahms symphonies, concerts in the Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Carnegie Hall in New York, the televised 2004New Year’s Concert at  La Fenice Theatre in Venice as part of the re-opening festival of the theatre. He has also appeared as a guest conductor with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

Lorin Maazel has made more than 300 recordings. Among them the symphonic works of Beethoven and Brahms with the Cleveland Orchestra; Mahler and Tchaikovsky with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra; Sibelius with the Pittsburgh Symphony; and Rachmaninoff with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. He has also recorded Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and the complete tonal poems of Richard Strauss with the Radiophonic Orchestra of Bavaria; Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet  and Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess with the Cleveland Orchestra (the first complete recording of these works); Puccini and Verdi with the Orchestra La Scala;  Wagner with the Berlin Philharmonic, L’Enfant et les Sortilèges, Fidelio, the 4th and 5th Symphonies of Mendelssohn and the Mozart Violin Concertos of  himself as the soloist, and the L’Histoire du soldat by Igor Stravinsky.

He has received the Grand Prix du Disque on ten different occasions.

As a violinist, Maestro Maazel has been a soloist with numerous orchestras; on tour celebrating his seventieth birthday, he performed his own compositions for Violin and Orchestra and he participated on a world tour with the pianist Yefim Bronfman, performing Three Sonatas for Violin and Piano by Brahms. 

Lorin Maazel is also a very talented composer: his opera 1984, which is based on the classic novel by George Orwell, was highly acclaimed making its international debut on May 3rd, 2005 at the Royal Opera House in London.