Maxim Emelyanychev

Maxim Emelyanychev was born in 1988 in the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, the son of a trumpeter and a singer. He sang in a boys’ choir at an early age and took piano lessons but already knew that he wanted to become a conductor and made his debut on the podium at the age of 12. He later studied with Gennady Rozhdestvensky at the Moscow Conservatory. In 2016, Emelyanychev took on the reins of the Il Pomo d’Oro ensemble, yet he is not limited to working with historically informed formations. He became Chief Conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in 2020 and will serve as Principal Guest Conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra as of the 2025-26 season. Emelyanychev has guest conducted the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Berlin and Munich Philharmonics, the Orchestra Nazionale dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, and the Orchestre de Paris. In the 2024-25 season, he made his debuts with the Orchestre National de France and the Tokyo Yomiuri Symphony Orchestra. He also toured Europe with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, led the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in Mendelssohn’s Elias at the Salzburg Easter Festival, and accompanied Joyce DiDonato on the piano in Schubert’s Winterreise. In the opera house, Emelyanychev has led Handel’s Rinaldo at the Glyndebourne Festival, Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Die Entführung aus dem Serail at Zurich Opera, and Le nozze di Figaro at London’s Royal Opera. He has garnered Gramophone Awards for his recording of Handel’s Agrippina and for the album In War and Peace, and his solo CD of Mozart sonatas won the Choc de Classica and the International Classical Music Award; the project Eden earned an Opus Klassik Award. His most recent recording comprises Schubert symphonies with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and appeared in the fall of 2024. He was awarded the Herbert von Karajan Prize in April 2025.

One previous Lucerne Festival performance: on 20 August 2023, in a Handel-Vivaldi program featuring Cecilia Bartoli and his ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro.

Mai 2025