Lawrence Foster

2008/09 marks Lawrence Foster's seventh season as Music Director of the Gulbenkian Orchestra. His contract with the orchestra has recently been extended until the 2012/13 season. Mr Foster will also become Music Director of Orchestre et Opéra National de Montpellier, starting from the 2009/10 season. Previous Music Directorships have been with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival and School, Monte Carlo Philharmonic, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony Orchestra and Lausanne Chamber Orchestra.

Lawrence Foster is a prolific guest conductor and engagements include Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Helsinki Philharmonic, RAI Turin, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Netherlands Philharmonic, the Vienna Symphony, NDR Hamburg and a Beethoven Piano Concerto cycle with Radu Lupu and Orchestre National de Lyon. Other recent projects include a Schumann Symphony cycle with the Czech Philharmonic in 2007/08, which was recorded for PentaTone, a tour of Spain with Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo and Jean-Yves Thibaudet in May 2008 and an Enescu Symphony cycle with NDR Hannover over three seasons, starting in autumn 2007. Mr Foster has worked with a number of major youth orchestras.

In the opera world, Mr Foster has presented at least one opera-in-concert in Lisbon per season: in 2008 this was Eugene Onegin. He has conducted in major houses throughout the world including the Metropolitan Opera, The Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Bastille in Paris, and the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Since the 1986 inauguration of the Los Angeles Music Center where he conducted Otello with Placido Domingo in the title role, he has conducted La Boheme, Faust, The Fiery Angel, Le Nozze di Figaro, Falstaff, Don Giovanni, Elektra and Samson and Nabucco. In 2006 he made his debut for the Bregenz Festival with the first completed version of Debussy’s unfinished opera The Fall of the House of Usher (completed by Robert Orledge).

In spring 2008 Mr Foster led a production of Roussel’s Padmavati at the Théâtre du Châtelet with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio. June 2008 saw his debut with Leipzig Oper in a production of Strauss’s Ariadne Auf Naxos, before a production of Reyer’s Salammbo in September 2008 with Opera de Marseille. Mr Foster will return to Hamburg Staatsoper for a revival of Pélléas et Mélisande in spring 2009 as well as a production of Weber’s Der Freischütz in the 2009/10 season.

Born in 1941 in Los Angeles to Romanian parents, Lawrence Foster has been a major champion of the music of Georg Enescu. He served as Artistic Director of the Georg Enescu Festival from 1998 to 2001, while his discography includes a recording on EMI of Enescu’s Oedipe – featuring Jose van Dam and Barbara Hendricks – awarded the prestigious ‘Grand Prix du Disque’ from the Academie Charles Cros. In 2005, to celebrate the Enescu anniversary, EMI released a boxed set of works by Enescu conducted by Lawrence Foster with the orchestras of Monte Carlo and Lyon. In January 2003 Mr Foster was decorated by the Romanian President for services to Romanian Music.