Lincoln Center Extends Contract of Music Director Louis Langrée Through the 2017 Season

Jane Moss, Ehrenkranz Artistic Director of Lincoln Center and the Mostly Mozart Festival, announced today that Lincoln Center has extended the contract for Louis Langrée, the Renée and Robert Belfer Music Director of the Mostly Mozart Festival and Orchestra through 2017. Maestro Langrée made his Mostly Mozart Festival debut with the Festival Orchestra in 1998, and was named Music Director in 2002. The artistic partnership between Langrée and the musicians of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra has been an exceptionally inspired and 2017 will mark his 15th year as Music Director of the ensemble and the Festival. Under his musical leadership, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra's stature and recognition as an outstanding ensemble has received extensive critical acclaim, and the orchestra's concerts are an annual highlight for summertime classical music lovers in New York City. In addition to its focus on the classical repertoire, concerts by the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra now regularly feature works from musical periods following Mozart including the 20th century and beyond.

"It gives me great pleasure that Louis Langrée has agreed to extend his contract through the 2017 season," said Jane Moss. "Working with him has been a musical and artistic highlight during my tenure at Lincoln Center, and I am certain that our most important musical adventures lie ahead of us. My admiration for his musical gifts, imagination, and inspiration knows no bounds and I am deeply proud of his extraordinary achievements with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra. His contribution to the musical life of New York City is treasured by all of the Mostly Mozart musicians and with equal fervor by our audiences. A conductor who can inspire equally musicians and audiences is a remarkable blessing."

"I am so happy to be extending my work with the Mostly Mozart Festival and Orchestra," said Louis Langrée. "This mutually inspiring relationship with the terrific Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra is deeply rewarding and a special joy. I feel we are now ready to soar ever higher musically. I feel so honored to have such a creative and nourishing musical home in New York City and feel the sky is the limit as to what we can achieve in the summers ahead."

Since Renée and Robert Belfer Music Director Louis Langrée was appointed to lead the Mostly Mozart Festival in 2002, his tenure has been marked by wide critical acclaim. In addition to his work with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Mr. Langrée is also Music Director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, a role he began in 2013, and Chief Conductor of the Camerata Salzburg. During his second season with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, he will conduct gala concerts with Lang Lang and Yo-Yo Ma and lead the orchestra in world premieres by Nico Muhly, Daniel Bjarnason and André Previn. His collaboration with the Camerata Salzburg will include concerts in Cologne, Salzburg, Vienna and on tour in South America. During the 2014-15 season, he will also return to the Orchestre de Paris and continue his regular appearances with the Wiener Staatsoper (Eugene Onegin) and Metropolitan Opera (Carmen). Highlights of the 2013-14 season included Pelléas et Mélisande at the Opéra Comique in Paris and debuts at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich (Don Giovanni) and with the Wiener Symphoniker at the Konzerthaus in Vienna. Other recent debuts have included the Berliner Philharmoniker, Leipzig Gewandhaus and NHK Symphony in Tokyo, as well as return engagements to the Budapest Festival and Netherlands Philharmonic orchestras.

Langrée has conducted the Wiener Philharmoniker in concert in both Vienna and Salzburg. He has worked with many other orchestras in North America, Europe and further afield, including the London Philharmonic, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Santa Cecilia in Rome, Sao Paulo and Tokyo Philharmonic orchestras. He also regularly conducts chamber orchestras including the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and Academy of St Martin in the Fields and period instrument ensembles: the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enligtenment and Le Concert d'Astrée. Festival appearances have included Wiener Festwochen, Salzburg Mozartwoche, BBC Proms, Glyndebourne Festival Opera and the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence. He has held positions as Music Director of the Orchestre de Picardie (1993-98) and Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège (2001-06). Langrée was Music Director of Opéra National de Lyon (1998-2000) and Glyndebourne Touring Opera (1998-2003). He has also conducted at La Scala, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Opéra-Bastille and Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Dresden Staatsoper, Grand Théâtre in Geneva and the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam. This coming season Louis Langrée's first commercial recording with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra will be released, featuring Copland's A Lincoln Portrait (narrated by Dr. Maya Angelou) and world premieres by Nico Muhly and David Lang. Louis Langrée's recordings have received several awards from Gramophone and Midem Classical. La Traviata,recorded at the Aix-en-Provence Festival with the London Symphony Orchestra for Virgin Classics, was recently released on DVD and awarded a Diapason d'Or. He has twice been recognized by the French government: in 2006 he was appointed Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture, and in 2014 he was appointed Chevalier in the National Order of the French Legion of Honor.

Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival-America's first indoor summer music festival-was launched as an experiment in 1966. Called Midsummer Serenades: A Mozart Festival, its first two seasons were devoted exclusively to the music of Mozart. Renamed the Mostly Mozart Festival in 1970, it has become a New York institution and, now in its 48th year, continues to broaden its focus to include works by Mozart's predecessors, contemporaries, and related successors. It is currently the only group in the United States dedicated to the Classical period. In addition to concerts by the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra,Mostly Mozart now includes concerts by visiting period-instrument ensembles, chamber orchestras and ensembles, and acclaimed soloists, as well as staged music presentations, opera productions, dance, film, and visual art.

The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra is the resident orchestra of the Mostly Mozart Festival. Over the years, the Orchestra has toured to such notable festivals and venues as Ravinia, Great Woods, Tanglewood, Bunkamura in Tokyo, and the Kennedy Center. Conductors who made their New York debuts leading the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra include Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Charles Dutoit, Leonard Slatkin, David Zinman, and Edo de Waart. Soloists including Joshua Bell, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Alicia de Larrocha, Richard Stoltzman, Emanuel Ax, and Garrick Ohlsson have had long associations with the Festival. Mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, flutist James Galway, soprano Elly Ameling, and pianist Mitsuko Uchida all made their U.S. debuts at the Mostly Mozart Festival.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA) serves three primary roles: presenter of artistic programming, national leader in arts and education and community relations, and manager of the Lincoln Center campus. A presenter of more than 3,000 free and ticketed events, performances, tours, and educational activities annually, LCPA offers 15 series, festivals, and programs including American Songbook, Avery Fisher Artist Program, Great Performers, Lincoln Center Festival, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Midsummer Night Swing, Martin E. Segal Awards, Meet the Artist, Mostly Mozart Festival, Target Free Thursdays, and the White Light Festival, as well as the Emmy Award-winning Live From Lincoln Center, which airs nationally on PBS. As manager of the Lincoln Center campus, LCPA provides support and services for the Lincoln Center complex and its 11 resident organizations, which include the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, The Film Society of Lincoln Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Juilliard School, Lincoln Center Theater, The Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet, New York Philharmonic, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the School of American Ballet and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. In addition, LCPA led a $1.2 billion campus renovation, completed in October 2012.

Photo Credit: Jennifer Taylor