Ingo Metzmacher, Václav Petr • Dvořák Prague Festival

Václav Petr is one of the most prominent cellists of his generation. He was a semi-finalist of the international cello competition Grand Prix Emanuel Feuermann (Germany), the winner of the 70th Prague Spring competition (Czech Republic), and the overall winner of Talents for Europe. He began his studies with Mirek Škampa at the Jan Neruda Grammar School in Prague before moving on to study at the Music Academy of Performing Arts in Prague with Daniel Veis and graduating from Michal Kaňka’s studio. He developed his playing with Wolfgang Boettcher at Berlin’s Universität der Künste and took part in the European Music Academy in Bonn. In 2015, he completed the Carl Flesch Academy masterclass courses with a solo performance alongside the Baden-Baden Philharmonic. He started his solo career at just 12 years of age, and he has since appeared with such orchestras as the Czech Philharmonic, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Prague Philharmonia. Being only 24 years old when selected as the Czech Philharmonic’s cello concertmaster, he became one of the youngest musicians to hold that post in the orchestra’s history. Václav Petr plays the “Teschenmacher” cello (1757) from Giovanni Battista Guadagnini’s workshop, on loan from a private collection.

Innovative programs and a passionate commitment to the music of the 20^th century have always been Ingo Metzmacher’s trademark and firmly established him as a leading international conductor.

Recent concert performances include returns to the Berlin Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony and BBC Symphony orchestras. He also continues to work closely with the Bamberg Symphony, Vienna Symphony orchestras and the Orchestre de Paris. This autumn he started a series of concerts over two seasons as Conductor in Residence with the New Japan Philharmonic in Tokyo.

His 2013/14 season sees the continuation of Dieter Dorn’s new production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen in Geneva. Das Rheingold opened in March 2013 and will be followed by Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung in autumn 2013 and spring 2014, with two complete cycles in May 2014. In the summer of 2013 he returned to the Salzburg Festival for a new production of Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s opera Gawain, directed by Alvis Hermanis. Further appearances at the Salzburg Festival have included the world premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s opera Dionysos; Prometeo and Al gran sole carico d’amore by Luigi Nono, as well as Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten. Other opera highlights of recent seasons were The Rake’s Progress and Die tote Stadt at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden; Königskinder, Tristan und Isolde, Der ferne Klang, Tannhäuser, From the House of the Dead, The Nose, and Palestrina at the Zurich Opera House; and Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District and Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny at the Vienna State Opera.

From 2007 to 2010 Metzmacher was Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. His thematic concert cycles during this time entitled ‘From The German Soul’, ‘Breakthrough 1909’, and ‘Temptation’ made a lasting impact on Berlin’s music life. Previously he had been Chief Conductor of The Netherlands Opera (2005–8) in Amsterdam. Highlights of his tenure included performances of Henze’s The Bassarids, directed by Peter Stein; Die tote Stadt and Die Gezeichneten with the Concertgebouw Orchestra; a cycle of the three Da Ponte operas by Mozart in productions by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito; and a Pierre Audi production of Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise. As General Music Director of the Hamburg State Opera (1997–2005), he conducted a series of internationally acclaimed productions, many of them in collaboration with stage director Peter Konwitschny. Highlights included Lohengrin, Wozzeck, Freischütz, Don Carlos and Moses und Aron.

Ingo Metzmacher’s discography includes live recordings of his New Year’s Eve concerts in Hamburg from 1999 to 2004, entitled ‘Who is afraid of 20^th Century Music?’; a complete recording of Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s symphonies with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra; the world premiere of Hans Werner Henze’s Ninth Symphony with the Berliner Philharmoniker; Olivier Messiaen’s Illuminations of the Beyond… with the Vienna Philharmonic; Hans Pfitzner’s Von deutscher Seele with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and a live recording of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk from the Vienna State Opera. Available on DVD are the Salzburg Festival productions of Wolfgang Rihm’s Dionysos and Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten, the Zurich Opera House production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Königskinder, Pierre Audi’s production of Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise for the Holland Festival 2008, and the Amsterdam productions of Mozart’s Da Ponte operas, directed by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito.

Ingo Metzmacher was born in Hanover. He studied piano, music theory and conducting in his home town and in Salzburg and Cologne. He found his first artistic home in Frankfurt, with the Ensemble Modern and the Frankfurt Opera under the artistic directorship of Michael Gielen. His international career began in 1988, during Gerard Mortier’s tenure as director of the La Monnaie in Brussels, when he stepped in to conduct a new production of Franz Schreker’s Der ferne Klang.