Louis Langrée, Music Director, Louise Dieterle Nippert & Louis Nippert Chair
In the 2023-24 season, Louis Langrée celebrates his final season with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, where he has been Music Director since 2013, and will become Music Director Laureate at the conclusion of this season. He continues as Director of Théâtre national de l’Opéra-Comique in Paris, an appointment that began in November 2021. Langrée ended his 20-year tenure as Music Director of the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center in the summer of 2023. Two of his Cincinnati recordings were Grammy nominated for Best Orchestral Performance: Transatlantic, with works by Varèse, Gershwin and Stravinsky; and Concertos for Orchestra, featuring world premieres by Sebastian Currier, Thierry Escaich and Zhou Tian. On stage, his Pelléas et Mélisande trilogy contrasted settings by Fauré, Debussy and Schoenberg. A multi-season Beethoven [R]evolution cycle paired the symphonies with world premieres, as well as recreation of the legendary 1808 Akademie. During the Covid pandemic, Langrée was a catalyst for the Orchestra’s return to the stage in the fall of 2020 with a series of digitally streamed concerts.
Between the start of his tenure and the conclusion of the CSO’s 2023–24 season, Langrée and the CSO will have commissioned 45 new orchestral works and he will have conducted 31 premieres from a wide range of composers, including Julia Adolphe, Daníel Bjarnason, Jennifer Higdon, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Kinds of Kings, David Lang, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, André Previn, Caroline Shaw and Julia Wolfe, and the world premiere of Christopher Rouse’s Symphony No. 6, Rouse’s final opus.
He has guest conducted the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, NHK Symphony, Orchestre National de France and Leipzig Gewandhaus, as well as Orchestre des Champs-Elysées and Freiburg Baroque. He frequently conducts at the leading opera houses, including more than 50 performances at The Metropolitan Opera, and engagements with Vienna Staatsoper, Teatro alla Scala, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Lyric Opera of Chicago and Bavarian Staatsoper, and at festivals including Glyndebourne, Aix-en-Provence, BBC Proms, Edinburgh International and Hong Kong Arts.
A native of Alsace, France, he is a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and Officier des Arts et des Lettres, and he is an Honorary Member of the Confrérie Saint-Étienne d’Alsace, an Alsatian wine-makers’ brotherhood dating to the 14th century.
Photo Credit: Chris Lee