Sir Jeffrey Tate

Following a sudden indisposition of Karl-Heinz Steffens, the concert of May 18 will be directed by Sir Jeffrey Tate.
In proggram there is the German Requiem by Johannes Brahms, with a text based on passages from the Old and New Testaments, selected and composed by Brahms himself, a creation born perhaps from the necessity to express through music the loss of his mother in February 1865: a symphonic page which contributed to the fame of the German composer.

Program

Johannes Brahms
Ein Deutsches Requiem op. 45 for soloists, choir and orchestra

Artists

Conductor
Sir Jeffrey Tate

Choir director
Lorenzo Fratini

Orchestra and Choir of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

Soprano
Sarah Tynan

Baritono
Martin Kränzle

JEFFREY TATE

Today Jeffrey Tate is one of the most renowned and versatile British conductors of his generation. Before committing himself to music, he acquired a doctoral degree in medicine at Cambridge. He began his musical career as a staff member of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London. A formative experience was the centenary “Ring” at the Bayreuth Festival, where he was the assistant of Pierre Boulez. On this basis, Tate later developed his own highly regarded interpretation of the “Ring”-Tetralogy in Cologne and Paris (with the Orchestre National de France). The Paris production was afterwards taken over by the State Opera of South Australia in Adelaide and made history as the first complete “Ring” performance in Australia. In addition to Wagner’s musical dramas, the work of Mozart is another focal point in his versatile repertoire.

Jeffrey Tate’s first independent production was “Carmen” in Göteborg. After this successful début, he quickly advanced to become an international opera as well as concert conductor. In Paris he was engaged at Théâtre du Châtelet for “Lulù” and “Peter Grimes”; at the Opéra Bastille he conducted “Rise and Fall of the City Mahagonny”, “Billy Budd”, and “Wozzeck”, and “Così fan tutte” in Palais Garnier on the occasion of the reopening of the renovated house. The Covent Garden Opera consigned him with new productions of “Idomeneo”, “Manon”, “Così fan tutte” and “Capriccio" as well as re-stagings of “Fidelio”, “Carmen”, “Lohengrin”, “Les Contes d’Hoffmann” and “Flying Dutchman”. Also at the New Yorker Metropolitan Opera, Jeffrey Tate has overseen a broad repertoire from “Don Giovanni” over “Lulù” to “Mahagonny”. In addition, he has engaged himself closely with the Geneva Grand Théâtre, where he conducted “Orpheus”, “Lulù”, “Le Nozze di Figaro”, “The Turn of the Screw” and “Ariadne auf Naxos”. Most recently, he conducted “Rosenkavalier” at the Vienna State Opera.

Jeffrey Tate is a frequent and welcome guest in Italy. Following his celebrated Scala début with “Peter Grimes” in Milan, there were performances of “Der Rosenkavalier”, “Tannhäuser” and “Ariadne auf Naxos”. At Teatro La Fenice in Venice he conducted “Walküre” and “Siegfried”. Also planned here are “Götterdämmerung” and “Das Rheingold”. After being awarded the Italian Music Critiques Prize Franco Abbiati in 2002 for the production of Humperdinck’s “Königskindern”, the Teatro San Carlo in Naples appointed him Music Director (as of 2005). Aside from “Le Nozze di Figaro”, “Die Walküre”, “Falstaff”, “Candide”, “L’Enfant et les Sortilèges”, “Peter Grimes” and “Entführung aus dem Serail”, he has also conducted numerous concerts in Naples.

In the concert area, Jeffrey Tate has worked together with practically all the large orchestras, among them the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI in Turin, with which he is connected as Direttore onorario, the London Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Salzburg Mozarteum-Orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Orchestra of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Rome, the Danish Radio-Orchestra, the Orchestra of Paris, the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra as well as the symphony orchestras of Toronto, Montreal, Melbourne and Sydney.

In 2001, 2002, and 2010 Maestro Jeffrey Tate was awarded the Franco Abbiati Prize (the most prestigious music critics’ prize in Italy) for his work with the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, for his work at the Teatro San Carlo in Napoli and for his production of Götterdämmerung at La Fenice in Venice. Jeffrey Tate has been named "Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur", "Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres", and "Commander of the British Empire".

In 2016 he received the prestigious “Una Vita nella Musica 2016” award in Venice.

Since the beginning of the 2009/10 season, Jeffrey Tate has devoted himself primarily to his new appointment as principal conductor of the Hamburg Symphony. In 2015, he has been appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.

In 2016 he was given by the Queen the knighthood for his services to British music overseas.