Jaap van Zweden, conductor

With the arrival last season of Jaap van Zweden as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, a new era began. Having concluded a highly acclaimed and revelatory inaugural season, Jaap van Zweden and the musicians of the New York Philharmonic unite for a new 2019-20 season of more surprises and adventurous experiences. As an international presence on three continents over the past decade, he also continues as Music Director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, a post he has held since 2012. Guest engagements this season include the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Shanghai Symphony and Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

Van Zweden has appeared as guest conductor with many other leading orchestras around the globe, among them the Orchestre de Paris, Leipzig Gewandhaus orchester, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics, and the London Symphony Orchestra.

In this his second season as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, Jaap van Zweden fuses past and present, representing today’s composers and the new-music landscape while reflecting on relevant historic achievements. He conducts repertoire ranging from seven World Premieres (including opening week with a Philip Glass commission and the season-concluding hotspots festival with works by Nico Muhly and Sarah Kirkland Snider, as well as three other works by women composers for Project 19) to symphonic cornerstones (including Mahler both in New York and on a European tour in 2020, when the Philharmonic becomes the first-ever American orchestra to appear at the Mahler Festival in Amsterdam). Other season highlights include a fully staged production of Bluebeard’s Castle and Erwartung. He conducts his first Young People’s Concert and once again invites his fellow New Yorkers to Phil the Hall. Added to his repertoire of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Schoenberg will be Björk, Steve Reich and John Adams.

Jaap van Zweden has made numerous acclaimed recordings, the most recent of which is a 2019 release with the New York Philharmonic of the World Premiere of Julia Wolfe’s Fire in my mouth, continuing the Philharmonic’s partnership with Decca Gold. In 2018 with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, he completed a four-year project conducting the first-ever performances in Hong Kong of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, which have been recorded and released on Naxos Records as individual recordings as well as a complete set. His highly praised performances of Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger and Parsifal, the latter of which earned Maestro van Zweden the prestigious Edison Award for Best Opera Recording in 2012, are available on CD/DVD.

Born in Amsterdam, Jaap van Zweden was appointed at age nineteen as the youngest-ever concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He began his conducting career nearly twenty years later in 1996. He remains Honorary Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic where he served as Chief Conductor from 2005-2013, served as Chief Conductor of the Royal Flanders Orchestra from 2008-11, and was Music Director from 2008-2018 of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra where he currently holds the title Conductor Laureate. Van Zweden was named Musical America's 2012 Conductor of the Year and was the subject of an October 2018 CBS 60 Minutes profile. Recently, he was awarded the prestigious 2020 Concertgebouw Prize, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic under Jaap van Zweden’s leadership was named Gramophone’s 2019 Orchestra of the Year.

In 1997, Jaap van Zweden and his wife Aaltje established the Papageno Foundation, the objective being to support families of children with autism. Now, over 20 years later, the Foundation has grown into a multi-faceted organization which, through various initiatives and activities, focuses on the development of children and young adults with autism. The Foundation provides in-home music therapy to children through a national network of qualified music therapists in the Netherlands; opened the Papageno House in August 2015 (with Her Majesty Queen Maxima in attendance) for young adults with autism to live, work and  participate in the community; created a research center at the Papageno House for early diagnosis and treatment of autism and for analyzing  the effects of music therapy on autism; develops funding opportunities to support autism programs; and launched the app, TEAMPapageno, which allows children with autism to communicate with each other through music composition.



Photo credit: Bert Hulselmans

Daniil Trifonov, piano

Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov launched his career by winning First Prize at both the Tchaikovsky and Rubinstein Competitions in 2011 at the age of 20. The 2016–17 season saw the release of Transcendental, a double album that represents Mr. Trifonov’s third title as an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist and marks the first time that Liszt’s complete concert études were recorded for the label. The winner of Gramophone’s 2016 Artist of the Year award, he played Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto under Riccardo Muti in the gala finale of the Chicago Symphony’s 125th anniversary celebrations and, having scored his second Grammy nomination with Rachmaninoff Variations, performed Rachmaninoff for his Berlin Philharmonic debut at the orchestra’s New Year’s Eve concerts, aired live in cinemas throughout Europe. He also made debuts with the Melbourne and Sydney Symphony Orchestras, returned to the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and headlined the Munich Philharmonic’s “Rachmaninoff Cycle” tour with Valery Gergiev. He played with the New York Philharmonic, The Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, and Dresden Staatskapelle at home and at the Salzburg Easter Festival and BBC Proms. Other collaborations included Zurich’s Tonhalle, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Mahler Chamber, Houston Symphony, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, and La Scala orchestras. Also a composer, Mr. Trifonov reprised his own concerto in Kansas City. He made recital debuts at London’s Barbican and Melbourne’s Recital Centre; appeared in Berlin, Vienna, Florence, Madrid, Oslo, and Moscow; and returned to Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York’s Carnegie Hall. This summer he returns to the Tanglewood, Verbier, Baden-Baden, and Salzburg festivals. Mr. Trifonov began his musical training at age five, and attended Moscow’s Gnessin School of Music and the Cleveland Institute of Music. Other honors include Third Prize in Warsaw’s Chopin Competition, First Prize in Tel Aviv’s Rubinstein Competition, both First Prize and Grand Prix in Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Competition, and the Franco Abbiati Prize for Best Instrumental Soloist. Daniil Trifonov made his New York Philharmonic debut in September–October 2012 performing Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3, led by Music Director Alan Gilbert; most recently, in November 2016, he performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25, led by Vladimir Jurowski. He joined the Board of the New York Philharmonic in 2015.

Photo: Dario Acosta