Stéphane Denève, conductor

Stéphane Denève is Music Director of the Brussels Philharmonic and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, former Principal Guest Conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra, and Director of the Centre for Future Orchestral Repertoire (CffOR). He has previously served as Chief Conductor of Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (SWR) and Music Director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

Recognized internationally for the exceptional quality of his performances and programming, he regularly appears at major concert venues with the world’s greatest orchestras and soloists. He has a special affinity for the music of his native France, and is a passionate advocate for music of the 21^st century.

Recent engagements include appearances with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestra Sinfonica dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Vienna Symphony, DSO Berlin, NHK Symphony, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, Czech Philharmonic, and Rotterdam Philharmonic. In North America he made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2012 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with whom he has appeared several times both in Boston and at Tanglewood, and he regularly conducts The Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony and Toronto Symphony. He is also a popular guest at many of the US summer music festivals, including Bravo! Vail, Saratoga Performing Arts Center, Hollywood Bowl, Blossom Music Festival, Festival Napa Valley, Grand Teton Music Festival, and Music Academy of the West.

He enjoys close relationships with many of the world’s leading solo artists, including Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Yo-Yo Ma, Nikolaj Znaider, James Ehnes, Leif Ove Andsnes, Leonidas Kavakos, Nicholas Angelich, Lang Lang, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Gil Shaham, Emanuel Ax, Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Lars Vogt, Nikolai Lugansky, Paul Lewis, Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, and Augustin Hadelich.

In the field of opera, Stéphane Denève led a new production of Pelléas et Mélisande with the Netherlands Opera at the 2019 Holland Festival. Elsewhere, he has led productions at the Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne Festival, La Scala, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Saito Kinen Festival, Gran Teatro de Liceu, La Monnaie, Deutsche Oper Am Rhein, and at the Opéra National de Paris.

As a recording artist, he has won critical acclaim for his recordings of the works of Poulenc, Debussy, Ravel, Roussel, Franck and Connesson. He is a triple winner of the Diapason d’Or of the Year, has been shortlisted for Gramophone’s Artist of the Year Award, and has won the prize for symphonic music at the International Classical Music Awards. His most recent releases include a live recording of Honegger’s Jeanne d’arc au bûcher with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and two discs of the works of Guillaume Connesson with the Brussels Philharmonic (the first of which was awarded the Diapason d’Or de l’année, Caecilia Award, and Classica Magazine’s CHOC of the Year).

A graduate and prize-winner of the Paris Conservatoire, Stéphane Denève worked closely in his early career with Sir Georg Solti, Georges Prêtre and Seiji Ozawa. A gifted communicator and educator, he is committed to inspiring the next generation of musicians and listeners, and has worked regularly with young people in programs such as those of the Tanglewood Music Center, New World Symphony, the Colburn School, the European Union Youth Orchestra, and the Music Academy of the West.

Haochen Zhang, piano

Since his gold medal win at the Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2009, Haochen Zhang has captivated audiences in the United States, Europe, and Asia with a unique combination of deep musical sensitivity, fearless imagination, and spectacular virtuosity. In 2017, Haochen received the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, which recognizes talented musicians with the potential for a major career in music.

Haochen has already appeared with many of the world’s leading festivals and orchestras including the BBC Proms with Long Yu and the China Philharmonic; the Munich Philharmonic with the late Lorin Maazel in a sold-out tour in Munich and China; the Easter Festival in Moscow by special invitation of Maestro Valery Gergiev; the Sydney Symphony and David Robertson in a China tour; and the NDR Hamburg and Thomas Hengelbrock in a tour of Tokyo, Beijing, and Shanghai.

In the 2019-20 season, Haochen continues his ongoing collaboration with The Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin with concerts in Philadelphia and a tour in Japan. Additional symphony highlights include Singapore Symphony, performances of all the Beethoven concertos with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and a tour in China with the National Symphony Orchestra and Gianandrea Noseda. He also gives solo recitals across China and Europe.

In July 2019, Haochen released his debut concerto album on BIS Records performing Prokofiev’s second piano concerto and Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra under Dima Slobodeniouk. His debut solo album was released by BIS in February 2017, which includes works by Schumann, Brahms, Janacek, and Liszt.

In recent seasons, Haochen debuted with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and toured Asia with The Philadelphia Orchestra. He has given extensive recital and concerto tours in Asia with performances in China, Hong Kong, and Japan. In October 2017, Haochen gave a concerto performance at Carnegie Hall with the NCPA Orchestra, which was followed by his recital debut at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall.

Haochen Zhang has performed with The Philadelphia Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, London Symphony, London Philharmonic, WDR Symphony Orchestra, Frankfurt Radio, San Francisco Symphony, LA Philharmonic, Pacific Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, Japan Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony, Mariinsky Orchestra, Warsaw Philharmonic, Taiwan Philharmonic, and Hong Kong Philharmonic orchestras, among others. In recital, he has performed at Spivey Hall, La Jolla Music Society, Celebrity Series of Boston, CU Artist Series, Cliburn Concerts, Krannert Center, Wolf Trap Discovery Series, Lied Center of Kansas, and UVM Lane Series, among others.

Haochen is also an avid chamber musician, collaborating with colleagues such as the Shanghai, Tokyo, and Brentano Quartets.  He is frequently invited by chamber music festivals in the United States including the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and La Jolla Summerfest.

Haochen’s performances at the Cliburn Competition were released to critical acclaim by Harmonia Mundi in 2009. He is featured in Peter Rosen’s award-winning documentary chronicling the 2009 Cliburn Competition, A Surprise in Texas.

Haochen is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he studied under Gary Graffman. He has also been studying periodically with Andreas Haefliger in Vienna. He was previously trained at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and the Shenzhen Arts School, where he was admitted in 2001 at the age of 11 to study with Professor Dan Zhaoyi.

Guillaume Connesson, Composer

Guillaume Connesson's style has been described as highly individual in its generally accessible language, having hints of Ravel, Messiaen, Stravinsky, and others. Among his most successful works are Supernova for orchestra and Techno-Parade for flute, clarinet and piano.

Connesson was born in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt in 1970. He took piano lessons in his youth and became quite accomplished on the instrument early on. Later he enrolled at the Conservatoire National de Région in Boulogne-Billancourt, where he studied piano and choral music. More advanced study came at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris, where he studied composition and orchestration. Among his most important teachers have been composer Marcel Landowski, conductor/pedagogue Dominique Rouits and composer/conductor Alain Louvier.

Among Connesson's earliest successes was his orchestral work Fêtes du solstice, premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in 1992. He continued to draw attention for the compositions that followed, including the orchestral piece Night-Club, written in 1996. By this time he was attracting many impressive commissions, which he met with his usual facility and highly individual imagination. His 1997 orchestral piece Supernova, written on a commission from the Montpellier Philharmonic Orchestra, which premiered the work, won the Cardin Prize of the Institute of France in 1998.

Subsequent compositions also quickly gained attention. Among them are his choral work Liturgies of the Shade (2000) and Night Scenes (2001), for orchestra. Among his first recordings has been the 2005 BMG release entitled Techno-Parade, which contained the titled work as well as other instrumental pieces, including Disco-Toccata (1994) and Jurassic Trip (1998).

While Connesson has achieved success in his native France, he has been making considerable headway abroad, as well: his 2005 orchestral work Une Lueur dans l'age sombre (A Glimmer in the Age of Darkness) was commissioned by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and premiered by that ensemble in September 2005, under conductor Stéphane Denève, the work's dedicatee. It was given its Canadian premiere in November 2005 by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, also under Denève's direction. Connesson has served as professor of orchestration at the CNR, Aubervilliers, France.

Artist Biography by Robert Cummings
Photo: Ben Morris