WASHINGTON — He was named Musical America’s 2015 Conductor of the Year.
Now, Gianandrea Noseda will become the seventh Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) beginning with the 2017-2018 season.
“I was very thrilled. I think we will have together very exciting years,” Noseda tells WTOP.
The 51-year-old maestro was the unanimous choice of the Search Committee, which was comprised of a group of NSO musicians elected by the orchestra’s members, representatives from the Board of Directors of the National Symphony Orchestra Association, and key members of the administrative staff. His appointment was approved by the Executive Committee of the NSO Board of Directors.
“Experiencing a live performance is something unique. … As a conductor, I always look for magic. I always look for a moment in a performance that makes me feel goose bumps. The interesting thing is when I feel that, most of the time in that moment, everybody in the audience and the orchestra feels that way, and that is what makes the live concert a life experience,” Noseda tells the Kennedy Center.
The appointment comes nearly two months following his recent appearance with the NSO.
His career has already been marked by numerous milestones and includes over 50 recordings, as well as transforming the Teatro Regio Torino from a regional opera company into a global force.
The Milan-born conductor was the first foreign Principal Guest Conductor of the Mariinsky Theatre, serving there for a decade. From 2002 until 2011, he served as Chief Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic, where he initiated the most successful classical music download project of that era resulting in over one million downloads of Beethoven Symphonies.
His 2011 performance of Britten’s War Requiem with the London Symphony Orchestra in New York caught the attention of many leading music critics, including Alex Ross, music critic of The New Yorker, who wrote “Noseda marshaled the finest War Requiem I have heard.”
Now in his ninth season as Music Director of the Teatro Regio Torino (Turin, Italy), Maestro Noseda has squarely placed it among the leading international opera houses with a range of “firsts” including DVDs, CDs, video streaming projects, and first-ever touring outside of Italy, including Asia, Europe, and Russia. The Teatro Regio Torino’s tour of North America in 2014 was heralded as one of the most impressive debut tours by an international performing arts institution in recent years.
Maestro Noseda also serves as Principal Guest Conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and has a long-standing relationship with the Metropolitan Opera dating back to 2002. Maestro Noseda has conducted many new productions there and is currently leading a celebrated new production of Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles (“The Pearl Fishers”), the first production of this opera at the Met in nearly a century which opened with a New Year’s Eve Gala.
In the 2013-2014 season he led the Met’s first production of Borodin’s Prince Igor in a century; it was subsequently released as a DVD by Deutsche Grammophon. He also has close relationships with the London Symphony Orchestra, NHK Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Orchestre de Paris, Filarmonica della Scala, and Wiener Symphoniker.
He made his Berlin Philharmonic debut in May 2015 and at the Salzburg Festival in August 2015 with the Vienna Philharmonic in a highly praised production of Il Trovatore starring Anna Netrebko.
The initial agreement for the NSO Music Directorship is for five years, with Maestro Noseda serving as Music Director Designate in the 2016-2017 season, and then for four seasons as Music Director.
As Music Director Designate of the NSO, Gianandrea Noseda will conduct two subscription weeks in 2016-2017. For the first season as Music Director with the National Symphony Orchestra, 2017-2018, Maestro Noseda will conduct eight subscription weeks, and 12 in the seasons following. During the term of the contract he will also lead tours and design special projects.
