Jaap van Zweden, music director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, surprised cultural leaders and audiences last year when he announced he would be stepping down in 2024.
The ensemble announced Sunday that it will begin a five-year contract as music director of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra from January 2024.
Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra CEO Song Eun-kyung said in a statement that Van Zweden will “upgrade” the quality of the ensemble and turn it into a “world-class orchestra,” according to South Korean news media. said it would help. report.
Van Zweden, who is in Hong Kong and music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, could not be reached immediately for comment.
His publicist, Mary Lou Falcone, said: that’s what he does. “
The move is another unconventional choice by van Zweden, 61, a passionate and methodical maestro from the Netherlands who arrived in New York in 2018, but the pandemic disrupted his tenure and left the Philharmonic Orchestra was forced to cancel and enforce more than 100 concerts. Painful budget cuts.
The Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, one of Asia’s most prominent ensembles, has been struggling with financial and financial difficulties in recent years. The current music director, Finnish conductor Osmo Vanska, recently announced that he would not renew his three-year contract, which is due to expire later this year.
Van Zweden, music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra before coming to New York, at one point led the Dallas Ensemble. He was America’s highest-paid conductor, and in one season he earned over $5 million.
Van Zweden will open the New York Post after the 2023-24 season, a year later than originally planned, to give the orchestra time to settle at the David Geffen Hall, which is scheduled to open in October following a $550 million renovation. have agreed to resign. , to find his successor. His six-year tenure is the shortest of any Philharmonic Orchestra music director since Pierre Boulez, the French composer and conductor who conducted the orchestra for six seasons in the 1970s. becomes.
In the spring of 2024, he left Hong Kong for the first time in 12 years and assumed the position of Conductor Laureate.
In an interview last year, Van Zweden said the pandemic has prompted him to rethink his relationship with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and his family. He said he felt it was the right time to move on.
“Not out of frustration, not out of anger, not out of a difficult situation,” he said at the time. “It’s just out of freedom.”