Following a landmark 2014-15 season, Lionel Bringuier looks forward to a 2015-16 season with performances as the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich’s Chief Conductor and Music Director as well as guest appearances in Paris, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Lyon, and beyond.
Lionel continues to celebrate the TOZ’s rich history while also expanding its repertoire, strengthening its commitment to community engagement, and extending its international reach with 2015-16 season Creative Chair Jörg Widmann and Artist-in-Residence Lisa Batiashvili. Launching the orchestra’s new season, Lionel leads Widmann’s Elegie, with the composer on clarinet, as well as Brahms’s Double Concerto with Batiashvili and cellist Gautier Capuçon. Widmann’s music figures prominently in subsequent programs, and Batiashvili rejoins the orchestra on its European tour and in a program featuring the Sibelius concerto in Zurich. Other notable collaborations in Zurich this season include baritone Matthias Goerne, violinist Janine Jansen, and pianists Leif Ove Andsnes, Yefim Bronfman, and Hélène Grimaud. The 2015-16 season also sees Lionel and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich conclude their Ravel Cycle — with the debut recording of the series featuring pianist and 2014-15 TOZ Artist-in-Residence Yuja Wang to released on Deutsche Grammophon later this year — an extensive European tour highlighted by stops in Paris, Cologne, Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, and Vienna, and guest appearances at the Prague Festival and Warsaw’s Beethovenfest.
The 2015-16 season also continues Lionel’s strong relationships with two American orchestras: The Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra, with concerts at both venues in November. First, Lionel and Wang team up for Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 in Los Angeles November 20, 21, and 22, followed by Lionel returning to Cleveland for the world premiere of Bernard Rands’s English Horn Concerto on November 27, 28, and 29.
Among his European highlights, Lionel is heard in his native France in October with the Orchestre de Paris for a program of Jörg Widmann, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, and Kodály, featuring Martin Helmchen as soloist in Schumann’s Piano Concerto. He also joins the Orchestre National de Lyon in May 2016 for Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 and Kindertotenlieder with Goerne as soloist.