Some projects

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO) and I are proud to announce the May 22nd release of our landmark live recording of Richard Wagner’s epic Der Ring des Nibelungen on Delos, the American label of Outhere Music. The project represents a rare undertaking for an American orchestra and is being released during the DSO’s 125th anniversary season, 150 years after the first performance of the complete Ring cycle at the Bayreuth Festival in 1876. The DSO and I recorded our live performances of the four operas – Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung – at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas across the year in 2024, culminating in full-cycle opera-in-concert performances that October. The cast includes Mark Delavan (Wotan), Lise Lindstrom (Brünnhilde), Sara Jakubiak (Sieglinde), Daniel Johansson (Siegfried), Christopher Ventris (Siegmund), Deniz Uzun (Fricka), Tómas Tómasson (Alberich), and Michael Laurenz (Mime), among many others.

This is music that demands everything from you – technically, emotionally, spiritually – and I am very thrilled and proud of the orchestra for embracing it with me. Wagner’s Ring cycle has been one of the most important and meaningful projects of my time with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Being the first American symphony orchestra in recent history to perform the entire cycle was a moment of great pride, made possible by the courage and commitment of the musicians and the entire DSO organization. The Ring holds a special and profound place in the history of music, and for me it has always been a deeply personal, transformational experience. I am thrilled that we have captured this in a recording and look forward to sharing the results with the world when it is released later this year.

Preorder the album and listen to the recently released single from Die Walküre here.

Arnold Schoenberg is one of the most profoundly original artists in the history of music. His music is both historically crucial, deeply personal and yet universal. Throughout his life, Schoenberg was on a continuous journey, both literally, personally and figuratively. In an artistic and intellectual sense, he moved from Brahmsian and Wagnerian ideals towards recognizing the limits of tonality, inspired by the artistic movements of his time (as well as the earliest film music). Only by seeing him as an artist and a human in constant motion can we understand his unique development, including his late return to the world of tonality, which I believe was never interrupted after all. I am incredibly pleased to embark on Schoenberg 150 with Deutsche Grammophon and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra. This important recording cycle has been a dream for many years, unveiling the beauty and the importance of Schoenberg’s music to a greater audience.

I really hope it will happen. Ulisse is a masterwork of Italian “motivischen Zwölftontechnik” that implements the bel canto tradition, so much loved by Dallapiccola. It is his opus summum.

It is unbelievable that I have not conducted Ravel’s arrangement of Pictures at an Exhibition before (I only conducted the Stokowski version). It is coming to NHKSO soon.

Die Liebe der Danae, “The Last Opera” by Richard Strauss, is a Greek mythology opera with comedic aspects and great music that demonstrates the composer’s late period.

It will be my third production. A masterpiece and a real thriller.