Marek Janowski
Current activities as director
In response to the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra’s offer of a tenured position as artistic director and chief conductor in the fall of 2008, Marek Janowski made the preliminary decision to renew his contract term with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra – a contract that has been in effect since 2002 – until 2016. Janowski has also been serving as director of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva since 2005, a position he will be giving up in 2012.
Career milestones as conductor
Prior to his work with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Janowski led the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo between 2000 and 2005. He also held the position of chief conductor with the Dresden Philharmonic between 2001 and 2003. Between 1984 and 2000, Janowski brought international recognition to the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France as its artistic director, molding it into France’s premiere orchestra. In addition to his work in France, he presided as chief conductor of the Gürzenich Orchester in Cologne between 1986 and 1990, also serving as principal conductor of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin between 1997 and 1999.
Born in 1939 in Warsaw, Janowski grew up and received his education in Germany, completing his studies as Kapellmeister in Cologne under such instructors as Wolfgang Sawallisch, after which his artistic path led him from work as répétiteur and Kapellmeister in Aachen, Cologne, Düsseldorf and Hamburg to engagements as general music director in Freiburg im Breisgau (1973-1975) and Dortmund (1975-1979). Janowski’s time in Dortmund was followed by intensive work on the international opera and orchestral music scene. From the Metropolitan Opera of New York to the Bavarian State Opera of Munich, from Chicago and San Francisco to Hamburg, between Vienna, Berlin and Paris, there is no world-renowned opera house that has not been graced by Janowski’s regular presence as guest conductor since the late 1970s.
Withdrawal from the opera house
In the 1990s, as Regietheater (“director-driven theater”) increasingly developed in a direction that diverged from his fundamental artistic vision, Janowski withdrew from the opera scene. The path Janowski has taken since that point has followed in the great German tradition of orchestral conductors, and he is known worldwide as a preeminent conductor of Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Bruckner and Strauss as well as a specialist in French repertoire. Janowski’s departure from opera conducting, however, was merely institutional and not musical in nature. Today more than ever, he is considered to be an expert on the music of such composers as Richard Wagner. Janowski’s highly efficacious and productive working methods, based on his exceedingly precise interpretive vision, have earned him an extraordinarily high reputation as guest conductor for orchestras such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony in the USA, the Tonhalle Orchester Zurich, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra in Copenhagen and the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg. He pairs his unconditional demands for exactitude, an all-encompassing knowledge of the score, an unwavering ear and clear communication with innovative programming ideas and a keen sense for what is underappreciated and only apparently familiar.
Work in Berlin
In 1999, Janowski accepted the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra’s initial invitation to direct a recording in 2000 of Paul Hindemith’s opera entitled “Die Harmonie der Welt,” a recording later distinguished with three prizes. In the fall of 2002, for his first season as artistic director of the orchestra, Janowski opened with a Schumann cycle, and in 2004, he founded the “Bridges of Sound” series, focused on the works of Hindemith and Haydn. The works of Ludwig van Beethoven and a series on French music in the 2009-2010 season were followed between 2010 and 2013 by a concert performance series of ten of the great operas and musical dramas by Richard Wagner.
Records and CDs
For 35 years now, more than fifty recordings – among them a large number of operas recorded in their entirety and complete symphonic cycles, with the majority of his recordings decorated with prizes – have brought international attention to Janowski’s singular capabilities as conductor. Even today, Janowski’s complete recording of Richard Wagner’s “The Ring of the Nibelung” with the Staatskapelle Dresden (made in 1980-1983) is considered one of the most musically interesting ever made of the work. Janowski recorded all of Brahms’ symphonies in Pittsburgh for the PentaTone label in 2008. A recorded CD series of the symphonies of Anton Bruckner in Geneva for the same label is scheduled for completion in the near future. In Berlin, Janowski recorded Johannes Brahms’ German Requiem in 2009 and the premiere recording of Leos Janácek’s Glagolitic Mass in 2010, also for PentaTone, as well as continuing to push ahead with the recording project on the WERGO label of Hans Werner Henze’s symphonies, already at a considerably advanced stage of completion.
Feb 2009/Geo
