Announcement season programme 2023–2024
It's celebration time: the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra has been in existence for 105 years. To celebrate this, we are bringing the world's top conductors and soloists to Rotterdam for a concert season that sparks.
Five years, one lustrum period ago, we entered the second century of our existence. A new beginning, with Lahav Shani as our brand new chef and Yannick Nézet-Séguin as honorary conductor. Also new were the initiatives for talent development that we set up afterwards: we started our own Orchestral Academy, we started an ambitious assistant conductor programme and we were partner of the International Conducting Competition Rotterdam from the very beginning. We breathed new life into the Proms concerts and appointed a super talent as our new permanent guest conductor. That paid off: you will see all these new developments in our new season.
Lahav Shani will begin his second term as our chief conductor next season. World soloists such as Martha Argerich, Janine Jansen, Seong-Jin Cho and Chen Reiss – our Artist in Residence this season – are coming to Rotterdam to make music with him and our orchestra. For Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto, Lahav selves behind the piano, meanwhile conducting from behind the keyboard: a spectacle not to be missed. We also get fireworks with our honorary conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin. He visits us with two wonderful concert programmes, including Wagner's Die Walküre. Anyone who has experienced our concert operas with him in recent years knows that this will be an experience not to be missed.
We also welcome Tarmo Peltokoski as our new permanent guest conductor. Less than a year after his Rotterdam debut ('staggering, breathtaking, tear-jerkingly beautiful,' in the words of NRC), he joins us. He will be responsible for three concert weeks, to bring the hall to the boiling point together with Simone Lamsma, Yuja Wang and Jörgen van Rijen. And that is by no means all that the new season has to offer to special guests. Great conductors and soloists such as Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Clara-Jumi Kang and Daniel Müller-Schott return to us; Manoj Kamps, Nicola Benedetti and Beatrice Rana make their long-awaited debut. And last but not least, there are the stars from our own orchestra: Marieke Blankestijn, Emanuele Silvestri, Roman Spitzer and Alex Elia.
The list of highlights is much longer, as you can now see on our website. Season 2023–2024 will be one big party; we invite you to celebrate it with us.
George Wiegel General Manager
Jeroen van Breugel Business Director
