Philippe Jordan

Music Director of the Opéra de Paris since 2009 and the Principal Conductor of the Wiener Symphoniker since the 2014/15 Season, Phillipe Jordan is counted among the best established and most sought-after conductors of his generation. He has been appointed Music Director of the Vienna State Opera beginning in 2020.

Maestro Jordan’s career on the podium began at Germany’s Stadttheater Ulm in the 1994/95 Season. From 1998 to 2001 Jordan served as Assistant Conductor and Kapellmeister under Daniel Barenboim at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. From 2001 to 2004 he was Principal Conductor of Austria’s Graz Opera House and the Graz Philharmonic Orchestra. During that period, Jordan also debuted at many of the most important international opera houses and festivals, including the Metropolitan and Houston Grand Operas, the festivals of Salzburg, Aix-en-Provence and Glyndebourne, as well as the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Vienna State Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, and the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden. From 2006 to 2010, Jordan served as Principal Guest Conductor of Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden, and in summer 2012 he made his debut at the Bayreuth Festival leading a production of Parsifal. He will return to New York in Spring 2019 to conduct The Ring of the Nibelungen at the Metropolitan Opera.

As a symphonic conductor, Maestro Jordan has worked with such renowned European orchestras as the Berlin, Munich and Vienna Philharmonics, the Vienna Symphony, Radio Symphony Orchestra of Vienna, Orchestra Philharmonique de Radio France, Philharmonia Orchestra London, Orchestra Dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, NDR Sinfonieorchester Hamburg, and the Salzburg Mozarteumorchester. In North America, he has conducted the symphony orchestras of Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Minnesota, Montreal, San Francisco, Seattle, and St. Louis, as well as the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, and the New York Philharmonic. In Fall 2018 he will conduct the London Symphony Orchestra.

In his work with the Vienna Symphony, Maestro Jordan has developed complete cycles of Beethoven’s symphonies and piano concerti (combined with the large orchestral works of Béla Bartók) and the symphonies of Schubert. Additionally, he has begun work on a cycle of the great masses and oratorios by Johann Sebastian Bach. In addition to recordings, Maestro Jordan’s Beethoven Symphony Cycle has been performed in both the Vienna Musikverein (2016/17) and the Vienna Konzerthaus (2017/18). Additionally, in the 2017/18 Season, he led a three-part Bruckner project, also at the Musikverein, in which the composer’s 7th, 8th, and 9th symphonies were presented in contrasting dialogue with classic works of the modern period by Kurtág, Ligeti, and Scelsi. In the 2018/19 Season, Maestro Jordan’s work with the Vienna Symphony will focus on the works of Hector Berlioz, including performances of not only the composer’s best-known works such as Le Damnation de Faust and Symphonie fantastique, but also rarely performed works such as the opulently instrumented Requiem, the lyrical melodrama Lélio ou Le retour à la vie und the song cycle Les Nuits d’été.

Following successful 2017/18 productions at the Opéra de Paris such as Pelléas et Mélisande, Don Carlos (in the original French version), Benvenuto Cellini, Parsifal, and Così fan tutte, Maestro Jordan will continue his tenure as Music Director with productions of Tristan und Isolde, Bérénice (world premiere), and Don Giovanni in the 2018/19 Season. In the Summer of 2017, Maestro Jordan conducted a new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in Bayreuth, which he will repeat in 2018.

Phillipe Jordan has also been active as a recording artist releasing recordings such as: Carmen (Glyndebourne Festival), Werther (Wiener Staatsoper), Doktor Faust (Opernhaus Zürich), Salomé (Royal Opera Covent Garden), Tannhäuser (Baden-Baden), and Le Nozze di Figaro (Opéra de Paris). His recording of Pelléas et Mélisande at the Opéra de Paris was awarded the “CHOC de l’année” Prize for Classical Music DVDs. In addition to operatic recordings, Maestro Jordan has recorded extensively for the Naïve label, including the complete Beethoven piano concerti with François-Frédéric Guy at the piano and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, as well as Richard Strauss’ Alpine Symphony with the orchestra of the Opéra de Paris, which also received the “CHOC de l’année Classica” award. Additionally, Jordan’s recording of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring was honored with the „CHOC du Monde de la Musique“ Prize. On the Erato label, Maestro Jordan and the orchestra of the Opéra de Paris have recently released recordings of Verdi’s Requiem and symphonic excerpts from Wagner's Ring and Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe and La Valse. His most recent recording with the orchestra of the Opéra de Paris, the complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies, was released on DVD in 2016.

His recording work with the Vienna Symphony includes discs of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 “Pathétique” (September 2014) and Schubert’s 7th and 8th symphonies (August 2015). A recording of the complete Beethoven symphonies with the Vienna Symphony is currently in progress. The first part, encompassing the composer’s 1st and 3rd symphonies was released in Fall 2017, the second with 4th and 5th symphonies in Spring 2018. The full 5-disc set is planned to be completed by the end of Beethoven’s 250th anniversary in 2020, with further releases planned Fall 2018 (symphonies 2 and 7), and Winter 2019 (symphonies 6 and 8). In the 2018/19 season, Maestro Jordan will be recording parts of his Berlioz Project in the Vienna Musikverein, specifically the composer’s Symphonie fantastique and its second part Lélio, which is planned to be released on CD in 2019.