“Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director Marin Alsop, whose career has included the breaking of glass ceilings worldwide, will break another one when she becomes the first female chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra,” writes Tim Smith in Monday’s (1/29) Baltimore Sun. “Her initial three-year contract begins in September 2019, the year the ensemble, associated with the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (Osterreichischer Rundfunk), marks its 50th anniversary…. The Vienna appointment … will not affect Alsop’s tenure in Baltimore. Her current BSO contract extends until 2021. ‘This appointment in Vienna will continue Marin’s international prominence as one of the world’s leading conductors,’ said BSO president and CEO Peter Kjome…. Kjome added that the BSO ‘routinely coordinates’ the orchestra’s scheduling with Alsop’s other commitments. Since 2012, her major outside-of-Baltimore work has been the post of principal conductor and music director of the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra—she’s the first woman to hold that job. Her tenure with the Brazilian ensemble continues through the end of 2019…. Vienna Radio Symphony managing director Christoph Becher said that the players ‘unanimously put [Alsop] forward as their new chief conductor’ after she conducted a Bernstein/Mahler program with them in Vienna in 2014.”
Posted January 30, 2018
