The São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, long recognised as South America’s leading symphony orchestra, today announced the appointment of Thierry as their next Music Director. Thierry was the first choice for the search committee led by musicians, management, board members and international advisers who were all impressed by his inspirational music making in concert and his rigorous attention to style and clarity of sound in rehearsal.

Thierry’s first concert as Music Director Designate will be on 9 July 2019 on the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Orchestra’s home, the Sala São Paulo. In his first concerts as Music Director he will conduct Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, part of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra’s wide-ranging Beethoven 250 cycle. Thierry will also conduct Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 1-8, with Marin Alsop conducting the Ninth in her last concerts as Music Director in December 2019.

Thierry remains Music Director of the Utah Symphony until August 2022 when he will become Music Director Emeritus. He is Principal Guest of the Seoul Philharmonic until the end of 2020, and continues as Honorary Conductor of the Nagoya Philharmonic in Japan.

Read the full press release here.

Thierry steps in to conduct the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment on tour to Spain and London this week, replacing Vladimir Jurowski at very short notice.

Fischer and the orchestra are joined by soloist Alina Ibragimova for concerts at the Palau de la Música in Valencia and Madrid’s Auditorio Nacional de Música on 29 and 30 May, before rounding off the week at the Royal Festival Hall in London on 31 May.

Fischer conducts a programme of Elgar Serenade for Strings, Strauss Violin Concerto and Sibelius Symphony No.2.

Thierry and the Utah Symphony continue their critically acclaimed Saint-Saëns symphonic cycle for Hyperion this month, with Volume 2 available from 3 May. Recorded at Abravanel Hall, the album features Saint-Saëns’ Symphony No.2, the tone poem Danse macabre featuring Utah Symphony Concertmaster Madeline Adkins and finally his Symphony in F major, also known as ‘Urbs Roma’. Click here to purchase the album from Hyperion Records or click here to purchase from Amazon.

Volume 1 of the cycle was released in January and was warmly received by the press, with Limelight Magazine praising Thierry and the Utah Symphony for their blend of “American muscle and Gallic lyricism”. Click here to purchase Volume 1.

Thierry and the Utah Symphony return to the Utah Opera pit from 9 March for Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Paul Peers’ production stars Andrew Stenson, Zulimar López-Hernández, Joo Won Kang and Grace Kahl and runs at the Janet Quinney Lawson Capitol Theatre until 17 March.

Thierry and the Utah Symphony then return to their regular home of Abravanel Hall at the end of the month for concerts with pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk and cellist Alban Gerhardt. On 21, 22 and 23 March, Thierry conducts Rachmaninov’s Vocalise and Piano Concerto No.2 with Gavrylyuk as soloist, alongside Andrew Norman’s Play: Levels 1, 2 and 3. Then on 29 and 30 March, Gerhardt joins them to perform Dutilleux’s cello concerto Tout un monde lointain…, which is performed alongside the famous overture to Rossini’s opera Guillaume Tell and Dvorák’s popular New World Symphony.

Thierry and the Utah Symphony have released the first recording in their Saint-Saëns cycle for Hyperion, with Volume 1 now available for purchase. Volume 1 comprises Symphony No.3 in C minor (“Organ”), featuring Paul Jacobs; “Danse Bacchanale” from Act III of the composer’s opera Samson et Dalila; and Trois tableaux symphoniques d’après La foi, based on the composer’s incidental music for a play by Eugène Brieux. It was recorded live in concert in December 2017 at the Utah Symphony’s home in Abravanel Hall, Salt Lake City. The cycle will be first complete, commercial recording of the composer’s five symphonies by an American orchestra and include two more releases.

Click here to purchase Volume 1 from Hyperion Records.

Thierry appears in Strasbourg this month to conduct The Dark Mirror, Hans Zender’s 1993 reimagining of Schubert’s Winterreise at le Maillon, Théâtre de Strasbourg on 17 and 18 January. The performances are the French premiere of a new production from Kornél Mundruczó, who uses Zender’s work and video filmed in a Hungarian refugee camp in 2014 to examine migration and the eternal strangeness of humanity. Thierry and his musicians are joined for the performances by singer János Szemenyei.

The following week, Thierry returns to Seoul to lead the Seoul Philharmonic in an all-Russian programme with pianist Boris Giltburg. Thierry opens the concert with Glinka’s overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila, which is followed by Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No.3 with Giltburg at the piano and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Performances take place at Seoul’s Lotte Concert Hall on 24 and 25 January.

Watch an extract of Thierry and the Seoul Philharmonic performing Berlioz in Paris at the Maison de la Radio, in the culmination of their European tour. Together they played Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique to a full house, earning much praise even from the Francophone press for this most quintessentially French masterpiece. Critics in Geneva and Luzern earlier in the week were equally enthusiastic.

“The Seoul Philharmonic was particularly persuasive, under the firm yet non-autocratic leadership of Thierry Fischer: the layering of sound desk by desk, the volume of the different forces which Berlioz takes such pleasure in disrupting, all kept constantly in balance. Particularly delicious were the silky, cohesive strings, while the woodwinds pulled their respectable colleagues along without flinching”
Concerto.net, December 2018

“Thierry Fischer brought out the still striking modernity of Berlioz’ programmatic work – with quick tempi and energetic accents, which turned the gloriously colourful orchestra into one huge percussion instrument. Orchestral fortissimos occasionally pushed details or contours into the background, but they did reinforce the obsessive, driven character of the music which hurled towards its finale”
Luzerner Zeitung, December 2018

“This vitality and sense of abandon were reflected in the public’s enthusiasm…The energy, commitment and power of conviction of the former flautist were given room for expression and space to blossom as he turned to the orchestra as his instrument… clarity and flexibility vied with powerful solidity…remarkable precision and brilliance”
Le Temps, December 2018

“ …our first glimpse of this stunning orchestra. The care they took with the sound quality, the musicality of the phrases, and the supple articulation was even more in evidence later on in the programme, during the monumental expressionism of Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique. Here one could hear the way the Seoul musicians used their refined sound (particularly from the strings) to create a tumult of contrasting effects, variety of texture and of musical ambiance.”
Tribune de Geneve, December 2018