Daniel KAWKA Orchestra Conductor

Daniel KAWKA
Directeur musical

A guest with the leading European symphony orchestras, Daniel Kawka, music director of the Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain, is now established as one of the leading interpreters of the music of the twentieth and twenty-first century and of the Romantic repertory, from Beethoven to Strauss. Since 2011 he has also been principal conductor of the Orchestra della Toscana.

For twenty years now he has dedicated himself to the interpretation of the music of our time, having conducted more than 400 contemporary works, including many world premieres. Today he takes a particular interest in recent British and North American compositions.

His broad repertory also extends to opera and the large-scale symphonic and choral works, in which he excels. He has conducted such great Romantic compositions as Verdi’s Requiem, Brahms’s German Requiem, Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony and Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette, as well as world premieres of operas by José Evangelista, Jacques Lenot, Suzanne Giraud (Le Vase de parfum, directed by Olivier Py), and Giorgio Battistelli (Divorzio all'Italiana). He has recently conducted Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in Geneva (in a production by Olivier Py) and Tannhaüser in Rome (staged by Robert Carsen). In March 2011 he conducted Busoni’s Turandot at the Opéra de Dijon, and he is also preparing a ‘short’ version of Wagner’s Ring to be performed in a single day.

Daniel Kawka belongs to the generation of conductors for whom the idea of ‘specialisation’ is a way of opening up the entire repertory, regardless of period. He nevertheless has a special predilection for certain composers, French (Dutilleux, Boulez, Dufourt), German (Beethoven, Wagner, Strauss, Bruckner, Mahler), Russian (Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Stravinsky), and American (Adams, Reich, Barber).