The National Youth Orchestra of the USA kick's off their 2018 tour this evening with the inaugural concert at Carnegie Hall.

Michael Tilson Thomas and Jean-Yves Thibaudet will accompany the 140 strong party to Taipei - Shanghai - Beijing - Seoul and Daejeon over the coming 17 days.

Maestro! are once again responsible for the travel & logistic arrangements for the tour as well a programmme of sightseeing and keeping the orchestra well fed thoughout the tour. Stacey Friend and Sam Green are already enroute to Taipei to make the final arrangements for the arrival of the orchestra on Sunday morning.

You can listen to the concert live online by going to WQXR National Public Radio

https://www.wqxr.org/shows/carnegie  

It has been announced that Vasily Petrenko will leave the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra at the end of the 2020/21 season and take over as Music Director of London's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in September 2021.

2021 will mark Vasily's 15th anniversary of music making in the city where he has made his home and raised his family as well as leading the Liverpool Philharmonic to new heights.

In his letter to Patrons he said "The time feels right for me to take on new opportunities and challenges and in September 2021, I’ll take up the position of Music Director of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. I’m delighted to be able to maintain my links with Liverpool Philharmonic and the City as Conductor Laureate".

Last month Vasily announced that he would leave his other post in Oslo at the end of their 2020 season which will allow him more time for guest conducting with some of the world's other great orchestras and also for new opera productions which take up a great deal of diary time in preparation and performance.

For Liverpool the search is now on for a successor and looking around at the up and coming young conductor's of the next generation the possibilities are very exciting for the orchestra to find a great successor to continue to take them to new heights in the next decade.  

Andrew Manze has been appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

The Three Year Appointment commences with 2018-2019 Season and his first season will include:

- Completion of Vaughan Williams Symphony Cycle

- Elgar’s Cello Concerto with Sheku Kanneh-Mason

- Britten’s War Requiem in Liverpool and Hannover

- Mozart’s Symphony No. 41, ‘Jupiter’

Liverpool Philharmonic is delighted to announce Andrew Manze, widely celebrated as one of the most stimulating and inspirational conductors of his generation, as Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. His appointment, initially for three years, commences with the 2018-2019 concert season, which opens in September.

The news comes ahead of Manze’s return to Liverpool to conduct the Orchestra on Thursday 7 June, in a concert that will be broadcast live from Liverpool Philharmonic Hall by BBC Radio 3.

In his first season as Principal Guest Conductor, Manze will complete the final instalment of his critically acclaimed journey with the Orchestra in concert and on disc, of Vaughan Williams’ Symphonies, conducting the Orchestra in a concert that includes his Ninth Symphony (27 September).

‘The conductor, Andrew Manze (is) ….the greatest living interpreter of Vaughan Williams’ music and especially of his symphonies. The performances of the Fifth and Sixth symphonies last week in Liverpool were awesome.’
Simon Heffer; The Telegraph, April 2017

In November, he conducts Sheku Kanneh-Mason, the 19-year-old British cellist, whose recent performance at the Royal Wedding was followed by his debut CD jumping to the top of the US pop charts, having already topped the classical music charts. Sheku is Liverpool Philharmonic’s first Young Artist in Residence and his debut concert in that role will see him perform Elgar’s Cello Concerto (8 November).

And in the same month, Manze conducts Benjamin Britten’s landmark War Requiem at Liverpool Cathedral (10 November). For this concert on Remembrance weekend, for which the composer drew on the poems of Birkenhead-born Wilfred Owen, Manze has invited orchestral musicians and choristers from Liverpool Philharmonic and Hannover’s NDR Radiophilharmonie where he is Chief Conductor, along with an international line-up of soloists, to join together as part of the events marking the centenary of the end of World War One. They will perform the work in Hannover’s Kuppelsaal in the preceding week (3 November); both Liverpool and Hannover are UNESCO Cities of Music.

Photo courtesy of Benjamin Ealovega