Hannu Lintu is one of Finland’s most sought-after conductors and is rapidly creating an international career. He has been artistic director and chief conductor of the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra 2009–2013, and also principal guest conductor of the RTE National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin. Before assuming the new rôle of chief conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2013, he was the orchestra’s chief guest conductor in 2012. Hannu Lintu was previously chief conductor of the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra and artistic director of the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra. He is a regular guest conductor with the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra in Finland and was artistic director of the orchestra’s Summer Sounds Festival in 2005.

Hannu Lintu studied the cello, the piano, and subsequently conducting with Jorma Panula at the Sibelius Academy. He participated in masterclasses with Myung-Whun Chung at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, Italy, and won first prize in the Nordic Conducting Competition in Bergen in 1994. He has appeared with the Cincinnati Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, St Louis Symphony, Toronto Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony and Dallas Symphony orchestras, the Stuttgarter Philharmoniker, Orquesta Sinfonica de RTVE, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Taiwan, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Seoul Philharmonic and Royal Flemish Philharmonic orchestras. He has also conducted a cycle of the complete Beethoven Symphonies with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.

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Christopher Ward studied at Oxford University and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In 2003 he was awarded a fellowship at Scottish Opera and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow.

He was a member of the International Opera Studio at Zurich Opera before moving to the Staatstheater Kassel in 2005 as conductor and solo répétiteur. In 2006 he assisted Sir Simon Rattle with the Berlin Philharmonic during a production of Wagner’s Rheingold. In 2009 he became conductor and musical assistant to Kent Nagano at the Bavarian State Opera. He has appeared as a guest conductor at Hamburg State Opera, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein and Berlin’s Komische Oper. In 2018/19 he took over as conductor of a new production of Jörg Widmann’s Babylon at the Staatsoper Berlin. Since 2018 he has been general musical director of the city of Aachen.

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Cornelius Meister, born in Hanover in 1980, became principal conductor and artistic director of the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna in September 2010.

With the RSO Vienna he has held regular concerts in the Vienna Musikverein and the Vienna Konzerthaus. Extensive tours have taken him to Japan and throughout Europe, including to Salzburg Festival. Together with the RSO Vienna, he has been present on European radio, European television, on albums and in the internet.

From 2005 to 2012, Cornelius Meister was general director of music in Heidelberg. During this time he was awarded the ‘Prize for the Best Concert Programme’ by the German Federation of Music Publishers and the ‘Young Ears’ Prize and the Prize of the German Music Council for conveying music to children and adolescents in 2007 and 2010.

In concerts, Cornelius Meister also conducts Het Concertgebouworkest Amsterdam, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra Manchester, the Washington Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, the Orchestra dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia Rome, Sveriges Radios Symfoniorkester Stockholm, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de l’Opéra national de Paris, the Ensemble intercontemporain Paris, the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin in the Berlin Philharmonic Hall, the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin, the NDR Symphony Orchestra Hamburg and the Symphony Orchestra of Bavarian Radio.

At the age of 21, Cornelius Meister held his début at Hamburg State Opera, followed by débuts at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the New National Opera Tokyo, the San Francisco Opera, the German Opera in Berlin, the Theater an der Wien, the Latvian National Opera in Riga (Der Ring des Nibelungen), the Royal Opera in Copenhagen, the Semper Opera in Dresden, Zurich Opera and Vienna State Opera.

Cornelius Meister studied piano and conducting with Konrad Meister, Martin Brauss and Eiji Oue in Hanover and with Dennis Russel Davies, Jorge Rotter and Karl Kamper at Salzburg Mozarteum. He also plays the cello and the French horn. As a pianist, he has held concerts in Europe and the USA and is a prizewinner of the German Music Competition and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival.

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