He will begin a five-year contract as music director of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra in 2024, after stepping down from the New York Philharmonic.
Jaap van Zweden, the New York Philharmonic’s music director, surprised cultural leaders and audiences last year when he announced he would leave his post in 2024, saying the pandemic had made him rethink his priorities.
Now he has started outlining his post-New York plans: He will begin a five-year contract as music director of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra in January 2024, the ensemble announced on Sunday.
Sohn Eun-kyung, the Seoul Philharmonic’s chief executive, said in a statement that van Zweden would help “upgrade” the quality of the ensemble and turn it into a “world-class orchestra,” according to South Korean news media reports.
Van Zweden, who was in Hong Kong where he serves as music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, could not be immediately reached for comment.
His publicist, Mary Lou Falcone, said: “This is about building something — the building of an orchestra, as he did in Hong Kong. That’s what he does.”
The move is another unconventional choice by van Zweden, 61, an intense and meticulous maestro from the Netherlands who came to New York in 2018, only to have his tenure interrupted by the pandemic, which forced the Philharmonic to cancel more than 100 concerts and impose painful budget cuts.
While the Seoul Philharmonic is among Asia’s most prominent ensembles, it has struggled in recent years with financial problems and management woes. The current music director, the Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä, recently announced he would not renew his three-year contract when it expires later this year.
Van Zweden, who served as music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra before coming to New York, was at one point, while leading the Dallas ensemble, America’s best-paid conductor, earning more than $5 million in a single season.
Van Zweden agreed to step down from his post in New York after the 2023-24 season, a year later than he had initially planned, to give the orchestra time to settle into David Geffen Hall, scheduled to open in October after a $550 million renovation, and to search for a successor. His six-year tenure will be the shortest of any Philharmonic music director since Pierre Boulez, the French composer and conductor who led the orchestra for six seasons in the 1970s.
He will leave his post in Hong Kong in the spring of 2024, after 12 years, and assume the title of conductor laureate.
In an interview last year, van Zweden said the pandemic had prompted him to reconsider his relationship with the New York Philharmonic, as well as with his family, which he rarely got to see during his time on the road. He said he felt it would be the right moment to move on, with the orchestra set to move into its new home.
“It is not out of frustration, it’s not out of anger, it’s not out of a difficult situation,” he said at the time. “It’s just out of freedom.”
Source: Music - nytimes.com
