Symphony Concert N° 11

Born in London, Nicholas Collon is a violist, pianist and organist by training, and studied as Organ Scholar at Clare College, Cambridge. As a conductor, he is recognized for his elegant conducting style, searching musical intellect and inspirational music-making. He is Chief Conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony, Founder and Principal Conductor of the Aurora Orchestra. From 2016-2021 he was Chief Conductor of the Residentie Orkest in Den Haag and was Principal Guest Conductor of Gürzenich-Orchester from 2017-2022.

Collon has conducted over 250 new works, including the UK or world premieres of works by Unsuk Chin, Brett Dean, Phillip Glass, Colin Matthews, Anna Meredith, Nico Muhly, Olivier Messiaen, Krzysztof Penderecki, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Judith Weir, and Du Yun. He is a regular guest of the Bamberg Symphony and BBC Philharmonic orchestras, the latter of whom he will conduct at the 2024 BBC Proms, and has also conducted DSO Berlin, ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic, New World

Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra of Europe amongst many others.

His first CD release with the Finnish Radio Symphony in Spring 2022 received 5-star reviews in Finland and internationally; in Autumn 2022 they released a CD of works by Thomas Adès which won a Diapason d'Or, and they have since released two further CDs of works by Wennäkoski and Bacewicz. Past recordings have included discs for Deutsche Grammophon and Warner with the Aurora Orchestra, with whom he won the Echo Klassik Award for ‘Klassik Ohne Grenzen’ in 2015; and discs with the Danish Radio Symphony, Philharmonia and Hallé orchestra.

Opera productions have included Peter Grimes and Don Giovanni for Oper Köln, Magic Flute at English National Opera, Jonathan Harvey’s Wagner Dream at Welsh National Opera, Rape of Lucretia for Glyndebourne Touring Opera, and Turn of the Screw at the Aldeburgh Festival with Aurora Orchestra.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard is widely acclaimed as a key figure in the music of our time and has had close collaborations with many leading composers including György Ligeti whose complete works for piano he has recorded. He has also worked with Stockhausen, George Benjamin, and Pierre Boulez who appointed Aimard, aged 19, to become the Ensemble intercontemporain´s first solo pianist. Praised by The Guardian as “one of the best Messiaen interpreters around” Aimard has had a close association to the composer himself and with Yvonne Loriod, with whom he studied at the Paris Conservatoire.

In recital and chamber projects, Aimard remains committed to championing contemporary composers, performing works this season by Klaus Ospald and Mark Andre. He will also give performances of Messiaen’s »Vingt Regards« at the Philharmonie de Paris and the Concertgebouw Amsterdam and collaborate with leading instrumentalists Mark Simpson and Jean-Guihen Queyras for trio recitals including works by Lachenmann at the Auditorio Nacional de Música and Elbphilharmonie.

An innovative curator and uniquely significant interpreter of piano repertoire from every age, Aimard has been invited to direct and perform in a number of residencies including most recently for Musikkollegium Winterthur where over the season he celebrated a number of different composers and opened with the complete cycle of Beethoven Piano Concertos. Elsewhere, he has performed ground-breaking projects at Porto’s Casa da Musica, New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, Konzerthaus Vienna, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Lucerne Festival, Mozarteum Salzburg, Cité de la Musique in Paris, Tanglewood Festival, the Edinburgh Festival, and was Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival from 2009 to 2016.

Through his professorship at the Hochschule Köln as well as numerous series of concert lectures and workshops worldwide, Aimard sheds an inspiring light on music of all periods. He was previously an Associate Professor at the College de France, Paris and is a member of Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste. He will take up the position as Head of New Music at the Reina Sofía School, Madrid in autumn 2021. 

Cynthia Millar’s most recent performances include concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lyon, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Nashville Symphony Orchestra and NHK Symphony Orchestra.

Cynthia’s most performed work, Messiaen’s large-scale »Turangalîla Symphonie«, makes a spectacular post-pandemic return with some of the top orchestras around the world during the 2022-23 season.

Cynthia will be performing with the Berlin Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, New York Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Brussels Philharmonic, and London Symphony Orchestra, among others. This season will also see Cynthia return to the LA Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony to perform Messiaen’s Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas.

In 2016 Cynthia premiered the Ondes Martenot part specially written for her by Thomas Adès in his opera »The Exterminating Angel« at the Salzburg Festival, and subsequently at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera and the Royal Danish Opera in March 2018. The 2016-17 season also saw her take part in a ten-concert tour of the »Turangalîla Symphonie« with the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra and Gustavo Dudamel, beginning in Caracas and culminating in a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall, New York.

Cynthia Millar studied the Ondes Martenot with John Morton in England and Jeanne Loriod in France. Since her first performance of the »Turangalîla Symphonie« at the 1986 BBC Proms with the National Youth Orchestra under Sir Mark Elder, she has played this piece around 200 times with some of the world’s leading conductors including Simon Rattle, Sakari Oramo, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Franz Welser-Möst, Paavo Järvi, Susanna Mälkki, Andrew Davis and Mariss Jansons.

Cynthia has recorded »Turangalîla« with the Bergen Symphony Orchestra for Juanjo Mena; and the Trois petites liturgies with the Seattle Symphony for Ludovic Morlot and the London Sinfonietta for Terry Edwards. She has played in well over 100 film and television scores and has written music for film, television and theatre, including scores for Robert Wise, Arthur Penn, Martha Coolidge and Peter Yates.