Matthew Halls

Artistic Director Designate

Named OBF Artistic Director Designate August 24, 2011, Matthew Halls has established himself as one of today’s leading young conductors. He will assume artistic leadership following the 2013 Festival.

Photo: Eric Richmond

A former Artistic Director of The King’s Consort, Matthew Halls has conducted in such prominent venues as Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam; La Cité de la Musique, Paris; the Konzerthaus, Berlin; and at the Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels. Having initially established his reputation as a keyboard player, Halls has worked extensively with many of Europe’s foremost early music groups and in opera houses including The Netherlands Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Komische Oper Berlin, as well as at venues such as The Megaron, Athens, Lincoln Center, New York and Wiener Festwochen. Beyond the early repertoire in which he has initially established his reputation, Halls has an avowed passion for the 19th-century Germanic and 20th-century British repertoire.  In the field of choral music he has conducted an eclectic cross section of the repertoire, juxtaposing composers as diverse as Byrd and Britten, Gesualdo and Schoenberg.

Halls has made significant debuts with orchestras such as Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Hessischer Rundfunk Sinfonie Orchester, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo, Iceland Symphony, Het Residentie Orkest and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. His 2010/11 season included amongst others debut appearances with the Bach Collegium Stuttgart, Colorado Symphony, Houston Symphony, Oregon Bach Festival and Tonkünstler Orchestra with re-invitations arising from all these. This season’s highlights include debuts with the BBC Scottish Symphony, Bergen Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra Washington, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestras.

In the opera house, Halls has made recent debuts with companies such as the Handelfestspiele Halle, the Korean National Opera, Salzburg Landestheater and Central City Opera Colorado. All resulted in immediate reinvitations; Halls returned to Central City in summer 2011, having already conducted Handel’s Rinaldo and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly with the company, for a well-received production of Handel’s Amadigi and this season returns to Salzburg with Handel’s Imeneo.  His operatic repertoire naturally covers Renaissance, Baroque and Classical works, but also extends to a wide range of later repertoire, with a particular focus on the Italian Bel Canto and the Britten operas. His association with both The Netherlands Opera and Nationale Reisopera Holland have included productions of Verdi Luisa Miller, Britten Peter Grimes and Bellini Norma, as well as Handel’s Hercules, Samson, Solomon and Saul.

In 2009, Halls founded the highly regarded Retrospect Ensemble. With an annual Wigmore Hall series providing the backbone of its concert diary, the ensemble already boasts a recording contract with the innovative Linn Records and a series of concert engagements from the Edinburgh International Festival to the Krakow Festival of Polish Music and a relationship with the Korean National Opera, with whom the ensemble recently collaborated for performances of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. Their recent London season included concerts at the Spitalfields Winter Festival and Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music.

Matthew Halls was educated at Oxford University and subsequently taught at the University for five years. Passionately committed to education and working with young musicians, the development of Retrospect Ensemble’s Young Artist Programme has been a priority for him. He is also a tutor for the European Union Baroque Orchestra and regularly teaches on summer schools and courses such as the Jerusalem Early Music Workshop and the Dartington International Summer School.

For more listings of reviews, recordings and concert dates, please see http://www.hazardchase.co.uk/