29.02.2024
Career
BIOGRAPHY 2024-2025
The German conductor Dominik Beykirch has been instrumental in defining the artistic profile of the Deutsches Nationaltheater (DNT) and the Staatskapelle Weimar since the 2015/16 season, consistently upholding a high standard of excellence. He was initially engaged as Kapellmeister and subsequently appointed 'Chief Conductor of Music Theatre' in 2020. Since the 2023/2024 season, Dominik Beykirch has assumed the role of Music Director.
The 2024/25 season at the DNT will feature two noteworthy productions: Richard Strauss's Salome, directed by Friederike Blum, and Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata in collaboration with opera director Andrea Moses and composer Brigitta Muntendorf. This season crowns Dominik Beykirch's highly successful decade-long working relationship with the DNT, which he will be terminating at the end of this season at his own request. Dirk Schmeding's reading of Puccini's Trittico will also be revived in the course of this season. With this work, Dominik Beykirch will appear at the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen in November 2024, marking his Scandinavian debut. Symphonic highlights of the season include performances of such substantial choral symphonic works such as Dvořák’s Stabat mater, Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony and Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang, as well as the New Year's Eve concert with the SWR Symphony Orchestra in the Liederhalle in Stuttgart. Participatory projects such as WE IN CONCERT and special concerts, for example as part of the Liszt Biennale Thüringen, also enrich the current season.
Dominik Beykirch has a long-standing collaboration with pianist Frank Dupree, with whom among other projects he introduced Nikolai Kapustin's piano concertos to a broader audience for the first time. The Second and Sixth Piano Concertos will be included in their second joint recording with the SWR Symphony Orchestra and the SWR Big Band, which is scheduled for release in November 2024. For his recording of the Fifth Piano Concerto with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin on the Capriccio label, Dominik Beykirch was nominated as Conductor of the Year for the OPUS Klassik award. The recording was released in February 2023 and was awarded numerous accolades, including the International Classical Music Award and the Diapason d'Or.
Dominik Beykirch has repeatedly received international acclaim for his opera conducting at the DNT. In October 2022, the opera Samson by Swiss composer Joachim Raff (directed by Calixto Bieito) was performed for the first time in 170 years at the initiative of Beykirch. In the 2019/2020 season, Dominik Beykirch achieved notable success with the opera Lanzelot by Paul Dessau, which had not been performed for 40 years. The trade journal Opernwelt singled out this production, directed by Peter Konwitschny, as “Rediscovery of the Year” and also nominated Dominik Beykirch as “Conductor of the Year”. In January 2023, the audite CD label released a recording of the entire opera, which was met with considerable critical acclaim. It received both the German Record Critics' Award and Opernwelt’s “CD of the Year” award in addition to be nominated for the International Opera Awards. New productions such as Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos in the award-winning production by Martin G. Berger (FAUST Prize 2020), Vincenzo Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi (directed by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito), Der fliegende Holländer (directed by Barbora Horáková), Aida (directed by Andrea Moses) and L'italiana in Algeri (directed by Tobias Kratzer) were met with great acclaim from both audiences and the specialists press.
In addition to his permanent position, Dominik Beykirch regularly appears as guest conductor. He has collaborated with numerous renowned orchestras, including the symphony orchestras of the HR, MDR, WDR, and SWR, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Dresden Philharmonic, and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester. Mr. Beykirch has conducted the Berlin Philharmonic, the Duisburg Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Halle, the Bremen Philharmonic, the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen, and the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie. He has also appeared at the Leipzig Opera, the Staatstheater Kassel, the Theatre in Chemnitz and has conducted performances at the Staatsoperette Dresden. Furthermore, he has collaborated with such distinguished soloists such as Nemanja Radulovic, Cameron Carpenter, Jens Peter Maintz, Jan Vogler, Danae Dörken, Michael Barenboim, Harriet Krijgh and Claudio Bohórquez.
In 2020, the album Clarinet Concertos was released on the Berlin Classics label. It features clarinettist Sebastian Manz performing the Clarinet Concerto by Danish composer Carl Nielsen, together with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken under the direction of Dominik Beykirch. Dominik Beykirch also recorded Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf with the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra for Berlin Classics (narrator: Malte Arkona).
Dominik Beykirch completed his studies at the Franz Liszt University of Music in Weimar in the conducting class of Prof. Nicolás Pasquet, Prof. Gunter Kahlert and Martin Hoff. He received further enriching artistic inspiration from Bernard Haitink, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Ton Koopman, among others, and as a scholarship holder in the Conductors' Forum of the German Music Council. He now shares his experience in master classes and by teaching at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy University of Music and Theatre in Leipzig. During the winter semester of 2024/25, he will also be teaching the main Orchestral Conducting class at the Franz Liszt University of Music in Weimar.
Status: October 2024
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Discography
Nikolai Kapustin: Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 6
Nikolai Kapustin
Nikolai Kapustin (1937–2020): Piano Concerto No. 2 op. 14 & No. 6 op. 74; Variations op. 3 and Toccata op. 8 for piano & big band; Nocturne op. 16 and Concert Rhapsody op. 25 for piano & orchestra
Frank Dupree, SWR Big Band, SWR Symphonieorchester, Dominik Beykirch
It was a small miracle when Nikolai Kapustin's music was discovered by a wider audience in the West: Who was this Soviet (!) composer, whose works sounded most like Oscar Peterson improvisations ... and yet were fully composed "classical" music, with complicated scores, all black with notes?! As we are now discovering more and more of Kapustin's music, and as can be heard on this recording, Kapustin developed his style subtly and steadily. He moves with the times; the jazz that influences him changes over the years and so does his music. In this sense, Kapustin never really settled on a "found style" for himself, but remained flexible with regard to the material that inspired him - but also its integration into the classical orchestral body. Kapustin's style, in this sense, is only that he fused jazz and classical music so inseparably.
Release date: 01.11.2024
Label: Capriccio
Youtube | Kaufen auf JPC
Nikolai Kapustin: Piano Concerto No. 5
Nikolai Kapustin
Nikolai Kapustin (1937-2020): Piano Concerto No. 5 op. 72; Concerto for two pianos & percussion op. 104; Sinfonietta op. 49 for piano 4-hands
Frank Dupree, Adrian Brendle, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Dominik Beykirch
It was a small miracle when Nikolai Kapustin's music was discovered by a wider audience in the West: Who was this Soviet (!) composer whose works sounded most like Oscar Peterson improvisations ... and yet were fully composed "classical" music, with complicated scores, all black with notes?! As we now discover more and more of Kapustin's music (and there is still a lot of unheard music!), despite all the supposedly familiar musical borrowings, a very individual, always enchanting voice crystallises: whether in such an unapologetically jazzy piece as the Concerto for Two Pianos and Percussion, the symphonic 5th Piano Concerto or the cheeky Sinfonietta, which seems to transport us to a smoky bar in 1940s Manhattan.
Release date: 03.02.2023
Label: Capriccio
Youtube | Buy on JPC
Lanzelot
Lanzelot
Opera by Paul Dessau (1894–1979)
Emily Hindrichs, Mate Solyom-Nagy, Oleksandr Pushniak, Wolfgang Schwaninger, Uwe Stickert u.a., Opernchor des Deutschen Nationaltheaters Weimar, Chor des Theaters Erfurt, Kinderchor schola cantorum Weimar, Staatskapelle Weimar, Dominik Beykirch
Lanzelot only saw three productions during Dessau's lifetime, after which the play disappeared from the stage, and a recording was never produced. It was only 50 years after the premiere that the National Theatre Weimar and the Erfurt Theatre dared to take on the challenges of the play again. Lanzelot was staged in Weimar at the end of 2019 by Peter Konwitschny and directed by Dominik Beykirch, but unfortunately, the Erfurt takeover was thwarted by the coronavirus pandemic. This edited recording demonstrates the power of Paul Dessau's music and its message, which is still burningly relevant today, three decades after the end of the Cold War.
Release date: 05.01.2023
Label: Audite
Youtube | Buy on JPC
Malte & Mezzo – Die Klassikentdecker: Peter und der Wolf
Malte & Mezzo – Die Klassikentdecker: Peter und der Wolf
With works by Sergeij Prokofieff (1891-1953), Text version by Loriot
Malte Arkona (narrator), Dresdner Philharmonie, Dominik Beykirch
Mezzo finds simply walking through the forest boring, he would much rather relax at home and put his feet up. If only there was a chip tree! The only thing that helps is an exciting story that has been told for many years. A scary wolf is spreading fear and terror. It's suddenly so quiet on the pond. Where is the grumpy duck? Can the cat in the tree hold back its hunger? Or will it get in the way of Peter and the brave bird? Because the two of them already have a plan that Peter's grandfather and the tipsy hunters can only marvel at...
Release date: 26.03.2021
Label: Berlin Classics
Youtube | Buy on JPC
Sebastian Manz – Clarinet Concertos
Nielsen & Lindberg
Sebastian Manz – Clarinet Concertos
Nielsen & Lindberg
With works by Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) and Magnus Lindberg (born 1958)
Sebastian Manz (clarinet), Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Dominik Beykirch, Magnus Lindberg
On his new album, Sebastian Manz explores the clarinet concertos by Danish composer Carl Nielsen and Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg. Both are known for creating overwhelming, abstract sound structures that allow the nature of their home countries to appear before their listeners like a sound painting. Together with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken-Kaiserslautern, Sebastian Manz presents three works that transport the listener to Nordic landscapes and paint audible sound pictures despite their musical complexity.
Release date: 04.09.2020
Label: Berlin Classics
Youtube | Buy on JPC
