Teodor Currentzis

Teodor Currentzis, who was born in 1972 in Athens, initially studied violin and composition at the National Conservatory of his native city. He moved to St. Petersburg in 1994, graduating with a master’s degree from the conducting program led by Ilya Musin, the legendary teacher whose conducting students have also included Semyon Bychkov and Valery Gergiev. Currentzis’ first leadership position brought him to the Novosibirsk State Opera in 2004, where he was General Music Director for six years. From 2011 through the summer of 2019, he served as Music Director of the State Opera House in Perm, where he also helms the Diaghilev Festival. He has won international renown with musicAeterna, an orchestra and chorus that he founded in 2004. With these musicians he has performed at such venues as the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and the Berlin Philharmonie. As an opera conductor, Currentzis has appeared at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater, Bavarian Staatsoper, Zurich Opera, the Teatro Real in Madrid, and the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. He made his debut at the Salzburg Festival with Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito in 2017, and he conducted all nine Beethoven symphonies there in 2018 and, in 2019, Mozart’s Idomeneo. Currentzis began his tenure as Principal Conductor of the SWR Symphony Orchestra in the fall of 2018; in recent months they have focused on symphonies by Mahler, Tchaikovsky, and Shostakovich, additionally performing these works at the Vienna Konzerthaus and the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie. With musicAeterna he undertook a tour to Japan for the first time in February 2019. Teodor Currentzis has received the Golden Mask, the Russian National Theater prize, seven times; the critics of Opernwelt magazine voted him Conductor of the Year in 2016. His most recent recording is an account of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony.

LUCERNE FESTIVAL debut on 25 March 2015, with musicAeterna in an all-Rameau program.

August 2019