Teodor Currentzis

Biography

Teodor Currentzis is the Founder and Artistic Director of the musicAeterna Orchestra and Choir and the Chief Conductor of the SWR Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart.

Born in Greece, Teodor has been calling Russia his home since the beginning of the 1990s, when he began studying conducting at the state conservatory of St. Petersburg under the tutelage of Professor Ilya Musin.

With musicAeterna, the ensemble he founded in 2004 in Novosibirsk, Teodor Currentzis regularly tours Europe with performances at the Berlin Philharmonic, Philharmonie de Paris, Baden-Baden Festspielhaus, La Scala Milan and the Madrid Auditorio. They have a long-standing relationship with the Salzburger Festspiele; performances in Salzburg include a new production of La Clemenza di Tito directed by Peter Sellars in 2017 (which transferred to Dutch Opera where Teodor made his debut in 2018), the full Beethoven symphony cycle in 2018 in five sellout concerts, and Idomeneo in 2019, directed by Peter Sellars in collaboration with the Freiburg Baroque and the musicAeterna choir. Teodor and musicAeterna made their BBC Proms debut in 2018. Last year, they made their Japanese debut with concerts in Tokyo and Osaka in February, as well as their New York debut at The Shed with Verdi’s Requiem alongside moving images from the late Jonas Mekas in November. In November 2020, they will return to New York to perform at The Shed again and make their debut in Carnegie Hall with Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” Symphony and the Adagio from Mahler’s Symphony No. 10.

In 2018/19, Teodor Currentzis was appointed Chief Conductor of the SWR Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart. In his first year with SWR, Teodor conducted Mahler’s Symphonies No. 3 and 4, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 in performances in Stuttgart and on tour, visiting the Vienna Konzerthaus, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie and Cologne Philharmonie amongst others. He finished his first season with SWR with a final performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 at the Salzburg Festival. In 2019/20, he will take the orchestra on tour to Spain, Italy and France.

In November 2019, Teodor Currentzis and the musicAeterna choir made their debut at the Berlin Philharmonic with Verdi’s Requiem.

Past highlights of Teodor’s career include: Resident Artist at the Vienna Konzerthaus beginning 2016/17, including concerts with Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Camerata Salzburg and musicAeterna; performing Brahms’s Requiem with musicAeterna choir and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra as part of the Diaghilev Festival in Perm and on tour in Europe; a tour with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra performing Berio’s Coro; Clemenza di tito and Mozart’s Requiem at Salzburg Festival, Verdi’s Macbeth at Zurich Opera with Barrie Kosky (2016); Wagner’s Das Rheingold with the musicAeterna orchestra (2015, RUHRtriennale in Bochum); Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta and Stravinsky’s Persephone at Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2015 (both productions had premiered in Madrid in 2012); Purcell’s The Indian Queen in Madrid (2012); Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District in Zurich (2012) and Weinberg’s The Passenger with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra in Bregenz (2010).

Teodor Currentzis was the Artistic Director at Perm Opera from 2011 till 2019 where he commissioned several important new works, including Phillipe Hersants ‘Tristia’ (2016), Dmitrii Kourliandski’s Nosferatu opera (2014), Alexei Syumak’s Cantos opera (2016), and a violin concerto by Sergey Nevsky (2015).

In 2006, sharing his knowledge and passion for early music with contemporary composers and exploring new music, Teodor was part of a group which initiated the Territoria Modern Art Festival — an event that quickly became the most prestigious and progressive annual music festival in Moscow. Since 2012, Teodor has also curated the Diaghilev Festival which is held in Perm, the impresario’s home town in the Urals Region of Russia.

Teodor Currentzis and musicAeterna are exclusive Sony artists and have released the Mozart-Da Ponte trilogy, Stravinsky’s Les Noces, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto (with Patricia Kopatchinskaja), Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 and Mahler’s Symphony No. 6. Previous recordings include Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 14, Mozart’s Requiem and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (all on the Alpha label), as well as Shostakovich’s Piano Concertos with Alexander Melnikov and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra on the Harmonia Mundi label.

In 2017, ECHO Klassik gave its award to the DVD/Blu-ray production of Purcell’s Indian Queen, (directed by Peter Sellers with Teodor Currentzis and musicAeterna); this followed on from a previous ECHO Klassik award in 2016 for ‘Symphonic Recording (20th/21st century music)’ given to their recording of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps. Both recordings were released on Sony Classical. In 2015, Teodor and his brother Vangelino Currentzis recorded and composed the soundtrack for the European Games opening ceremony in Baku and were nominated for an Emmy Award in the category of Outstanding Music Direction and Composition. Teodor Currentzis was awarded the Order of Friendship of the Russian Federation in 2008 and was the recipient of the Toepfer Foundation’s prestigious Kairos Award in 2016. The same year, Opernwelt named Teodor Currentzis Best Conductor of the Year for his Macbeth at Zurich Opera. Teodor Currentzis was awarded the Bremen Musikfest-Preis in 2019.

Teodor has so far been awarded the Golden Mask (Russia’s prestigious theatre award) eight times in his career. Among those, the one in 2017 was as Best Opera Conductor for La Traviata, a Perm Opera production directed by Robert Wilson. Previous awards include the Best Opera Conductor award (Indian Queen 2015 and Cosi Fan Tutte, Perm 2013 and Wozzeck, Bolshoi 2011), for a “brilliant performance of Prokofiev’s score” (Cinderella, 2007) and for “outstanding results in the area of authentic performance” (The Marriage of Figaro, 2008).