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Kent Nagano to conduct the premiere of Wagner’s Das Rheingold

Kent Nagano will conduct the premiere of Wagner’s Das Rheingold  on 4 February 2012 opening the Bayerische Staatsoper’s Ring Cycle in a new production by Andreas Kriegenburg.  There will be further performances on 8 & 12 Feb. 
The Cycle continues between February and June with premieres of Die Walküre (11, 15 & 25 March), Siegfried (27, 31 May, 3 June) and Götterdämmerung  (30 June) followed by two complete cycles at the Munich Opera Festival in July. All premieres will be broadcast live on radio BR Klassik.
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Kent Nagano triumphs in three sold-out performances of Messaien’s St François d’Assise at the Bayerische Staatsoper

Kent Nagano has triumphed in three sold-out performances of Messaien’s St François d’Assise at the Bayerische Staatsoper where he is General Music Direcor

The Wiener Zeitung said:

Musically, it would be almost impossible to improve on the sound we heard emerging from the orchestra pit in Munich. We had a conductor who had internalized the particular colour and the exotic sophistication of Messiaen the bird-song expert, and also possessed the ability to put across the beauty of this music, oscillating as it does between twittering nature, the parlando of suffering and release, and the striving for heavenly sounds. The performance by Nagano and his orchestra in particular, but also the chorus and the convincing ensemble, is quite simply astounding.

Statement read by Kent Nagano at a Benefit Concert for the Japanese Red Cross with the Aoyama Gakuin Orchestra in Tokyo on 5 June 2011

I am very pleased and gratified to work with these energetic young musicians who are just now in the beginning process of learning how to develop their God given talent into advanced musical skills.

No matter how these gifted young students continue, whether they become eventual professional musicians or become leaders within other fields, it is my belief that they each carry and represent our future and their optimism will inspire the courage and strength to help rebuild Japan after the recent challenges Nature has brought and take it far beyond toward new successes and new dreams.

As such, today's concert represents an investment and belief in the strength, the brilliant potential and the future of Japan.

As a community we know the true meaning of music is not only as an art form but as well represents other aspects essential to our society. Music is a doorway into the human spirit.

If we were to limit our lives by only the 2 dimensional reality of the accuracy of facts alone, it would be a colorless world devoid of animation. As humans we have always needed to imagine a world beyond the limits of banal reality - without imagination we would have no dreams, no hope, no courage, and no vision.

Mankind needs these perspectives - we need other pictures beyond the daily news broadcasts of facts and figures - we seek something higher to believe in above and beyond the borders of objectivity.

Our lives are nourished by beauty - just as water, soil and sunlight nourish a plant - and this is the miracle of music.

Music allow us to see beyond our seemingly impossibly complicated and problematic world and opens a pathway to the knowledge that beauty and hope are also realities which must be part of our lives.

This is also why our children - our youth - have always represented hope - for they are spirit of an artistic ideal and the embodiment of beauty.

Today Madame Fujimura and I welcome you to today's concert with Aoyama University Orchestra a benefit concert organized by NBS for the Japan Red Cross.

Hopefully you will, as do Madame Fujimura and I, rejoice in the precocious talents of these young university students and are inspired by the optimism their creative energy brings.

We invite you to join us in investing in Japan's hope, its youth and their potential for it is they who will carry the great cultural tradition of Japan far beyond today's limits and on into a bright future.
 

Kent Nagano conducts Solidarity Concert for Japan and performances in Munich, Berlin and Paris

Kent Nagano starts this coming month with performances of Poulenc’s Les Dialogues des Carmelites at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich where he will also be conducting Brahm’s Ein Deutsches Requiem which will also be performed at the Bayerische Staatsorchester’s Solidarity Concert for the Japan Earthquake on 3rd April at Munich’s Cathedral of Our Lady.  Mr Nagano will also be travelling to Paris with the Bayerische Staatsoper for concert performances of Wagner’s Parsifal at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysees.  Later in the month there will be an appearance in Berlin with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester where he will conduct Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9, followed by concerts with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal conducting Beethoven’s Symphony No’s 6 and 8.