Gianandrea Noseda
Conductor

Gianandrea Noseda is one of the world’s most sought-after conductors, equally recognized for his artistry in both the concert hall and opera house. He was named the National Symphony Orchestra’s seventh music director in January 2016 and began his four-year term with the 2017–2018 season. In September 2018, at the start of his second season with the NSO, his contract was extended for four more years, through the 2024–2025 season. He leads 12 weeks of subscription concerts with the Orchestra this season, as well as their first appearance together at Carnegie Hall in New York in May 2019.

In addition to his position with the NSO, Noseda also serves as Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. In July 2018, the Zurich Opera House appointed him the next General Music Director beginning in the 2021–2022 season where the centerpiece of his tenure will be a new Ring Cycle directed by Andreas Homoki, the opera house’s artistic director.

Nurturing the next generation of artists is important to Noseda, as evidenced by his ongoing work in masterclasses and tours with youth orchestras, including the European Union Youth Orchestra, and with his recent appointment as music director of the newly-created Tsinandali Festival and Pan-Caucasian Youth Orchestra in the village of Tsinandali, Georgia, which begins in 2019.

Noseda has conducted the most important orchestras and at leading opera houses and festivals including the Berlin Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, La Scala, Munich Philharmonic, Met Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, NHK Symphony, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre National de France, Philadelphia Orchestra, Royal Opera House, Salzburg Festival, Vienna Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, and Zurich Opera House. From 2007 until 2018, Noseda served as Music Director of Italy’s Teatro Regio Torino where he ushered in a transformative era for the company matched with international acclaim for its productions, tours, recordings, and film projects.

Yefim Bronfman
Piano

Yefim Bronfman was born in 1958 in Tashkent (Uzbekistan). In 1973 he emigrated with his family to Israel, where he continued his piano studies with Arie Vardi at the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel Aviv. Soon thereafter, he moved to the United States and completed his training with Rudolf Firkušný, Leon Fleisher, and Rudolf Serkin. His debut with the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta in 1978 launched an international career that has brought him together with the leading orchestras and conductors. In the 2017-18 season, for example, he went on a tour of the United States with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and Zubin Mehta; concertized with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Mariss Jansons in Munich, London, and Vienna; and appeared with the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. The Vienna Philharmonic invited him to perform four concerts in April 2018 to jointly celebrate his 60th birthday; and at the end of the season he traveled with the London Symphony Orchestra throughout Thailand and China. From the outset of his career, Bronfman has also devoted himself intensively to chamber music, for example in partnering with Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman, and Yo-Yo Ma and later with Magdalena Kožená and Emmanuel Pahud. Bronfman, who appeared as LUCERNE FESTIVAL’s “artiste étoile” in 2009, is moreover a committed performer of contemporary works and has given the world premieres of piano concertos by Esa-Pekka Salonen (2007) and Magnus Lindberg (2012) and of Jörg Widmann’s Trauermarsch for piano and orchestra (2014). Bronfman, who has been an American citizen since 1989 and who received the Avery Fisher Prize in 1991, commands an extensive discography; his recording of the three Bartók concertos won a Grammy Award.

LUCERNE FESTIVAL (IMF) debut on 25 August 1999 in Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto, with the Israel Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta.

Pan-Caucasian Youth Orchestra