Simone Young has been Artistic Director of the Hamburg State Opera and Chief Music Director of the Hamburg Philharmonic since August 2005. She has conducted here a broad musical spectrum of premieres and repertoire performances ranging from Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, Wagner and Strauss to Hindemith, Britten and Henze. At the State Opera and with the Hamburg Philharmonic, she has been able to achieve great successes with world premieres and several German premieres. Simone Young has made an international name for herself as a Wagner conductor: she was music director of several complete cycles of the Ring of the Nibelung at the Vienna State Opera and the State Opera Unter den Linden in Berlin. She forged her own Ring with great success at the Hamburg State Opera, conducting the complete cycle here as well. Engagements led the Sydney-born conductor to all the leading opera houses of the world, including the Vienna State Opera, the Opéra National de Paris, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, the Bavarian State Opera, the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Los Angeles Opera. Alongside her extensive operatic activities, Simone Young has also made a name for herself on the concert podium. She has worked with all the leading orchestras, including the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Simone Young directed the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra as Principal Conductor from 1999 until 2002 and was Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Australian Opera in Sydney and Melbourne from January 2001 until December 2003. From 2007 until 2013 she also was Principal Guest Conductor of the Lisbon Gulbenkian Orchestra.

Simone Young appears on numerous recordings. For example, alongside recordings from the Hamburg State Opera such as Mathis der Maler, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung on OehmsClassics, there are also several recordings with the Hamburg Philharmonic. Among others, ten Bruckner symphonies have been issued as well as the Second and the Sixth Symphony of Gustav Mahler and the symphonies of Johannes Brahms.

Simone Young has received numerous prizes and awards. She is an honorary doctor of the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne, Professor at the Academy of Music and Theatre in Hamburg, a member of the Order of Australia and a “Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres” as well as a recipient of the Goethe Medal. She was honoured as “Conductor of the Year” for her first opera season in Hamburg, and also received the Schleswig-Holstein Brahms Prize. In 2009, together with the Hamburg Philharmonic, she made the Hanseatic City into the world’s largest concert hall – from the Michel Tower, she conducted 100 musicians at 50 locations throughout the city.

In 2012 Simone Young, the Hamburg Philharmonic and soloists of the Hamburg State Opera presented Wagner’s Das Rheingold and Mahler’s Second Symphony in Brisbane, Australia, for which Young received the Helpmann Award in the category of “Best Individual Classical Music Performance” in 2013.

Translation: David Babcock

Bruckner’s 200th anniversary: Interview with Simone Young on Symphony No. 6 (Gramophone)

Feature interview: At 200, Bruckner Is More Popular Than Ever With Conductors. Why? (The New York Times)

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British conductor Nicholas Collon is recognised for his elegant conducting style, searching musical intellect and inspirational music-making. He is Founder and Principal Conductor of Aurora Orchestra and has been Chief Conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony since 2021 (renewed until 2028). He was Chief Conductor of the Residentie Orkest in Den Haag (latterly also Artistic Advisor) 2016–2021, and was Principal Guest of the Gürzenich Orchester from 2017–2022.

With the Finnish Radio Symphony he has toured to the BBC Proms, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and to Germany and Estonia. Their expanding discography together for Ondine includes acclaimed discs of Sibelius, Lutosławski, Adès and Wennäkoski (winning the 2023 Gramophone Award for Best Contemporary Recording), with Richard Strauss, Elgar, Holst, and more Sibelius to come. Their 2024/25 concert season includes Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie and Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps as part of a Paris theme, and works by Finnish-American composer Lara Poe. Every concert is broadcast live on Finnish National TV.

Collon leads the Aurora Orchestra at the BBC Proms every year in their hugely popular memorised performances, this year Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, televised live. Aurora are Resident at Kings Place and at the Southbank Centre where they have reinvented the concert format with their ‘Orchestral Theatre’ Series. This season they tour to major German cities, and continue to appear regularly at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Cologne Philharmonie, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, and festivals such as Bremen, Rheingau, Schleswig Holstein and Gstaad. They have recorded for Warner, winning the Echo Klassik Award for ‘Klassik Ohne Grenzen’ in 2015, and latterly for Deutsche Grammophon.

Collon debuted with the Dresden Staatskapelle in Spring 2024, and in 24/25 makes his first appearances with the San Francisco Symphony, Munich Philharmonic and WDR Symphony, and returns to the DSO Berlin. He regularly conducts orchestras such as the BBC Philharmonic (appearing at the BBC Proms with them in his second televised Prom this year), City of Birmingham Symphony, Orchestre National de France, Danish National Symphony, Frankfurt Radio Symphony and Dresden Philharmonic, and has also guested with Philharmonia, London Philharmonic, Minnesota Symphony, Toronto Symphony, Vienna Radio Symphony, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, and Chamber Orchestra of Europe among many others.

Collon has conducted over 250 new works, including the UK or world premieres of works by Unsuk Chin, Brett Dean, Phillip Glass, Colin Matthews, Anna Meredith, Nico Muhly, Olivier Messiaen, Krzysztof Penderecki, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Judith Weir, and Du Yun. Opera productions have included Peter Grimes and Don Giovanni for Oper Koeln, The Magic Flute at English National Opera, Jonathan Harvey’s Wagner Dream at Welsh National Opera, The Rape of Lucretia for Glyndebourne Touring Opera, and The Turn of the Screw at the Aldeburgh Festival with Aurora Orchestra. Born in London, Nicholas is a violist, pianist and organist by training, and studied as Organ Scholar at Clare College, Cambridge.

www.nicholascollon.co.uk

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Cornelius Meister, born in Hanover in 1980, became principal conductor and artistic director of the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna in September 2010.

With the RSO Vienna he has held regular concerts in the Vienna Musikverein and the Vienna Konzerthaus. Extensive tours have taken him to Japan and throughout Europe, including to Salzburg Festival. Together with the RSO Vienna, he has been present on European radio, European television, on albums and in the internet.

From 2005 to 2012, Cornelius Meister was general director of music in Heidelberg. During this time he was awarded the ‘Prize for the Best Concert Programme’ by the German Federation of Music Publishers and the ‘Young Ears’ Prize and the Prize of the German Music Council for conveying music to children and adolescents in 2007 and 2010.

In concerts, Cornelius Meister also conducts Het Concertgebouworkest Amsterdam, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra Manchester, the Washington Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, the Orchestra dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia Rome, Sveriges Radios Symfoniorkester Stockholm, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de l’Opéra national de Paris, the Ensemble intercontemporain Paris, the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin in the Berlin Philharmonic Hall, the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin, the NDR Symphony Orchestra Hamburg and the Symphony Orchestra of Bavarian Radio.

At the age of 21, Cornelius Meister held his début at Hamburg State Opera, followed by débuts at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the New National Opera Tokyo, the San Francisco Opera, the German Opera in Berlin, the Theater an der Wien, the Latvian National Opera in Riga (Der Ring des Nibelungen), the Royal Opera in Copenhagen, the Semper Opera in Dresden, Zurich Opera and Vienna State Opera.

Cornelius Meister studied piano and conducting with Konrad Meister, Martin Brauss and Eiji Oue in Hanover and with Dennis Russel Davies, Jorge Rotter and Karl Kamper at Salzburg Mozarteum. He also plays the cello and the French horn. As a pianist, he has held concerts in Europe and the USA and is a prizewinner of the German Music Competition and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival.

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