Closing Concert

The Orchestre National de France is both an established authority and a dynamic force in the interpretation of French music. Its international tours have made it a flagship for French culture around the world, while its presence throughout France, reinforced by vibrant educational programmes, has cemented its relationship with a diverse national audience.

A Radio France ensemble, the Orchestre National de France was founded in 1934 as the country’s first full-time symphony orchestra. Its mission to serve the symphonic repertoire was furthered by radio broadcasts of its concerts, and it soon achieved an outstanding reputation.

After the Second World War, Manuel Rosenthal, André Cluytens, and Jean Martinon, among others, enriched this tradition, which was further enhanced by successive musical directors (Lorin Maazel, Charles Dutoit, Kurt Masur, Daniele Gatti, Emmanuel Krivine) and regular guests (Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Muti, Seiji Ozawa...). On September 1, 2020, Cristian Măcelaru took over as Music Director of the Orchestre National de France.

In the 20th century, the Orchestre National de France gave the premieres of a number of major works, including Le Soleil des eaux by Boulez, Déserts by Varèse, Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony (French premiere), Xenakis’s Jonchaies, and the majority of Dutilleux’s large-scale compositions.

Numerous recordings by the orchestra are commercially available. Under the baton of Louis Langrée, the Orchestre National de France recorded Ravel's two piano concertos with pianist Alexandre Tharaud. To mark the centenary of the death of Camille Saint-Saëns, it released a complete set of his symphonies conducted by Cristian Măcelaru for Warner Classics. Finally, a new boxed set of George Enescu's symphonies, also conducted by Măcelaru, has recently been released by Deutsche Grammophon.

source: Künstleragentur Dr. Raab & Dr. Böhm

Cristian Măcelaru became the Music Director of the Orchestre National de France on 1 September, 2020. He was born in the Romanian city of Timișoara in 1980. After violin studies in Romania, he moved to the USA, training at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan and at the universities of Miami and Houston, where he studied conducting with Larry Rachleff. He later attended masterclasses given by David Zinman, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Oliver Knussen, and Stefan Asbury at the Tanglewood Music Center and Aspen Music Festival. At just 19 years old, he made his debut as concertmaster of the Miami Symphony Orchestra at New York’s Carnegie Hall, becoming the youngest concertmaster in the orchestra’s history. Currently, he is Music Director of the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne and, since 2017, of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in California. Cristian Măcelaru is also the Music Director Designate of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, a post he assumes in the 2024/25 season.

Cristian Măcelaru first gained international attention in 2012 when he stepped in for Pierre Boulez as conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. That same year, he received the Solti Emerging Conductor Award, followed in 2014 by the Solti Conducting Award. Since then, he has conducted many of the leading American orchestras – including the Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Cleveland Orchestra – and enjoys an especially close relationship with the Philadelphia Orchestra, which he has conducted more than 150 times.

In Europe, Cristian Măcelaru regularly appears as a guest conductor with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and BBC Symphony Orchestra. In October 2021, he accepted the invitation of Romania’s Minister of Culture to become Artistic Director of the George Enescu Festival in Bucharest.

source: Künstleragentur Dr. Raab & Dr. Böhm

Rudolf Buchbinder is one of the legendary performers of our time. The authority of a career spanning more than 60 years is uniquely combined with esprit and spontaneity in his piano playing. Tradition and innovation, faithfulness and freedom, authenticity and open-mindedness merge in his reading of the great piano literature.

His interpretations of the works of Ludwig van Beethoven in particular are regarded as setting standards. He has performed the 32 piano sonatas in cycles all over the world more than 60 times to date and has continued to develop the history of interpretation of these works over the decades.  

With the edition BUCHBINDER:BEETHOVEN, Deutsche Grammophon presents a complete recording of the 32 piano sonatas and the five piano concertos in the run-up to Buchbinder's 75th birthday in December 2021, thus creating a sounding monument to two outstanding Buchbinder-Beethoven cycles of recent times. Buchbinder was the first pianist to play all of Ludwig van Beethoven's piano sonatas within one festival summer at the 2014 Salzburg Festival. The Salzburg cycle was recorded live for DVD (Unitel) and is now also available on nine CDs.

The sensational cycle of Ludwig van Beethoven's five piano concertos came about during the 2019/20 concert season at the Vienna Musikverein. In celebration of its 150th anniversary, the Vienna Musikverein, for the first time in its history, gave a single pianist, Rudolf Buchbinder, the honor of performing all five piano concertos by Ludwig van Beethoven in a specially created series. Buchbinder's partners in this unprecedented constellation were the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Gewandhauskapellmeister Andris Nelsons, the Vienna Philharmonic under Riccardo Muti and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic and the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden under their principal conductors Mariss Jansons, Valery Gergiev and Christian Thielemann. All concerts were recorded live. The Musikverein cycle, released on three CDs in September 2021 on Deutsche Grammophon, is a historic document of these artistic summits and a tribute to Buchbinder as one of the most profound Beethoven interpreters of our time.

On his new album Soirée de Vienne, released by Deutsche Grammophon in November 2022, Rudolf Buchbinder recreates a Viennese evening party and brings together composers who are intimately connected with Vienna - like himself. "The freedom to savor a moment, the luxury of intelligent naivety and the curiosity in an instant - all this is what makes music come alive," says Rudolf Buchbinder. The album is an attitude to life poured into sound.

As a contribution to the celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven's birth, Rudolf Buchbinder initiated a cycle of new Diabelli Variations. Following the genesis of Beethoven's epochal Diabelli Variations op. 120, Buchbinder succeeded in enlisting eleven leading contemporary composers of different generations and origins - Lera Auerbach, Brett Dean, Toshio Hosokawa, Christian Jost, Brad Lubman, Philippe Manoury, Max Richter, Rodion Schtschedrin, Johannes Maria Staud, Tan Dun and Jörg Widmann - to write their personal variations on the same waltz theme as Beethoven once did. The New Diabelli Variations were commissioned by eleven concert promoters worldwide with the support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation and received their world premiere by Rudolf Buchbinder at the Vienna Musikverein before becoming a part of his touring programs in Europe, Asia and the United States. The project reflects Beethoven's work into the 21st century and impressively underlines the universality of his language across all borders.

Under the title "The Diabelli Project", Deutsche Grammophon released the world premiere recording of the New Diabelli Variations in March 2020 alongside a new reading of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, which Buchbinder last recorded before in 1976. The double album marked the beginning of his exclusive partnership with Deutsche Grammophon. Also in 2020, a live recording of Beethoven's 1st Piano Concerto with Christian Thielemann and the Berlin Philharmonic followed.

Rudolf Buchbinder is an honorary member of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, the Wiener Konzerthausgesellschaft, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. He is the first soloist to be awarded the Golden Badge of Honor by the Staatskapelle Dresden.  

Buchbinder attaches great importance to source research. His private collection of sheet music includes 39 different editions of Beethoven's complete piano sonatas as well as an extensive archive of first printings, original editions and copies of the autograph piano parts of both piano concertos by Johannes Brahms.  

As Artistic Director, he is responsible for the Grafenegg Festival, which has been one of the most influential orchestral festivals in Europe since 2007.

Rudolf Buchbinder has published an autobiography entitled "Da Capo" as well as the book "My Beethoven - Life with the Master." His latest book, "The Last Waltz," was published to coincide with the premiere of the New Diabelli Variations in March 2020 and tells 33 stories about Beethoven, Diabelli and piano playing.  

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