Lorin Maazel

For over five decades, Lorin Maazel has been one of the world’s most esteemed and sought-after conductors. In 2010-11, he is completing his fifth and final season as the inaugural Music Director of the spectacular, Santiago Calatrava-designed opera house in Valencia, Spain, the Palau de les Arts "Reina Sofia." Music Director of the New York Philharmonic from 2002-2009, he assumes the same post with the Munich Philharmonic at the start of the 2012-13 season. He is also the founder and Artistic Director of new festival based his farm property in Virginia, the Castleton Festival, launched to exceptional acclaim in 2009 and expanding its activities nationally and internationally in 2011 and beyond.

Over the past twelve years, Lorin Maazel has also come into prominence as a composer with a widely varied catalogue of works. His first opera, “1984”, based on the literary masterwork by George Orwell, was given its world première in May of 2005 at London’s Royal Opera House Covent Garden. A new production of “1984” was presented in May of 2008 at La Scala Milan; that same month, a DVD of the London production was released.

Born to an American family near Paris in 1930, Lorin Maazel started studying the violin at the age of five, received instruction in conducting from Vladimir Bakaleinikoff at seven, and his first public appearance took place when he was eight years old. Between the ages of 9 and 15 he mounted the podiums of virtually every major American orchestra and accepted an invitation from Arturo Toscanini to conduct the NBC Symphony Orchestra. At 17 he entered the University of Pittsburgh to study languages, mathematics and philosophy. In 1951, a Fulbright Scholarship enabled him to continue his studies in Italy. Two years later he made his European conducting début when he stepped in for an indisposed colleague at the Teatro Massimo Bellini in the Sicilian city of Catania. He quickly established himself as one of the most important orchestral conductors, received invitations to Bayreuth in 1960 (as the first American conductor there), to the Boston Symphony< in 1961 and to the Salzburg Festival in 1963.

Since then Lorin Maazel has stood on the podiums of more than 150 different orchestras in no less than 5,000 concert and operatic performances. He has conducted over 300 recordings, among them complete recordings of the orchestral works of Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, Mahler, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Richard Strauss and been awarded ten Grands Prix du Disque for them.

In 1956 Lorin Maazel became Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. There followed positions as Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra (1972-1982) and Chief Conductor of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks (1993-2002). 60 years after his début with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra Lorin Maazel was appointed the successor to Kurt Masur as Music Director of this orchestra in September of 2002. Lorin Maazel is an Honorary Member of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra as well as the Vienna Philharmonic, with which he has conducted the New Year’s Concert eleven times, and has received the Hans von Bülow Medal from the Berlin Philharmonic.

Besides his numerous performance engagements, Lorin Maazel still finds the time to promote up-and-coming young artists and share his experience with the younger generation of musicians. In the year 2000 he established a competition for young conductors, the final round of which took place two years later in Carnegie Hall and since then has been an active mentor of the competition finalists. With the aid of the Châteauville Foundation he founded a new festival and education program for young artists in Castleton, Virginia, at which promising singers, instrumentalists and conductors work together in a shared environment, supported by experienced artists and mentors.