Download Alejo Pérez, Conductor `The performance lets a great conductor

Alejo Pérez, Conductor
'The performance lets a great conductor shine, the young
Argentinian Alejo Pérez, who at every single moment manages to
keep up suspense in the music from the beginning to the very end
by means of a confident and controlled interpretation. The orchestra
reacts perfectly'. El País on Rienzi at the Teatro Real Madrid
Full of ideas and initiative, Alejo Pérez constantly seeks out new
challenges. This search led the young Argentinean conductor
from composition to conducting. He studied both composition
and conducting, in addition to piano, in his home town of Buenos
Aires. Nowadays, Pérez regularly works in his home country, as
well as in Europe with major orchestras and ensembles.
In 2010, Gerard Mortier invited him to become guest conductor and music consultant at the
Teatro Real Madrid. Since then, he has regularly performed with the Orquesta Sinfónica de
Madrid, and in 2012, he was hugely successful with the concert version of Wagner’s Rienzi as
well as with a production of Golijov’s opera Ainadamar (stage directed by Peter Sellars).
Since he assumed the position of music director of the venerable Teatro Argentino de La
Plata, the most important Argentinian opera house after Teatro Colón, Alejo Pérez has been
instrumental in bringing it to new success. Between 2009 and 2012, he and director Marcelo
Lombardero produced great pieces of the opera and concert repertoire, praised by the press
and audiences alike. New productions of Verdi’s Nabucco and Don Carlos, Berlioz‘s La
Damnation de Faust and Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, Bizet's Carmen
as well as Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and Rheingold were performed under his baton.
Initially valued for his interpretation of contemporary music, Alejo Pérez has developed a
large repertoire. Pérez debuted at the NDR Symphony Orchestra, where he was assistant
conductor to Christoph von Dohnányi between 2005 and 2007, as part of a 'Mozart Night'. In
the following years he performed at the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Orquesta
Sinfonica Nacional de Chile, Dresdner Philharmonie, Orchestre National de Lille, the
musikFabrik Köln, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Taipei Symphony
Orchestra, and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. He also appeared as conductor for
Ensemble Modern’s project into Istanbul, with commissioned compositions by Mark Andre,
Beat Furrer, Samir Odeh-Tamimi and Vladimir Tarnopolski in Frankfurt, Berlin, Vienna, Essen,
and Istanbul. In the recent years, he took the podium at the Asko Schönberg Ensemble,
Ensemble Contrechamps, as well as the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and
Freiburg.
Alejo Pérez has worked in close collaboration with the composer Peter Eötvös. He premiered
two operas as Eötvös’ assistant: Angels in America (Théâtre du Châtelet Paris) and Lady
Sarashina (Opéra de Lyon and later at Opéra Comique in Paris). In 2008, he conducted
Eötvös’ opera Of Love and Other Demons in a production by the Glyndebourne Festival at the
Lithuanian National Opera. Moreover, Alejo Pérez has conducted Matthias Pintscher’s opera
L’espace dernier (Opera Bastille Paris), Henze’s opera Pollicino and Stravinsky's Le Rossignol
at the Opéra de Lyon, Rihm’s Jakob Lenz in Antwerp, Maderna’s Satyricon in Buenos Aires, as
well as Don Giovanni at the Opera Frankfurt. In 2008 in Buenos Aires, he devoted himself to
early music, conducting Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride. In 2011 he also led the
Gewandhausorchester Leipzig in performances of Paul Dessau’s oratorio Deutsches Miserere
at the Leipzig Opera.
In the current season, Alejo Pérez will return to the Ensemble Intercontemporain Paris and
make his debut with the Klangforum Vienna at the Vienna Konzerthaus. Another debut will
lead him to the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma with Shostakovich's The Nose, stage directed by
Peter Stein. At the Teatro Real Madrid, he will conduct Mozart's Don Giovanni in a production
of the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence.
Season 2012/2013
www.karstenwitt.com