©Photo: Marc Ginot

Lawrence Foster

Conductor

Discography

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Lawrence Foster bio 2023-24 English

“Lawrence Foster seems to have been put on this planet to conduct Enescu’s music. He is clearly a true believer and he understands every technical nuance and every expressive twist and turn”.
(The Telegraph)

Lawrence Foster is known for his exhilarating and expressive performances in a wide range of music and enjoys a major career spanning the US, Europe and Asia. As a champion of the music of Enescu, his interpretations are renowned for their faithfulness to the score: “Lawrence Foster seems to have been put on this planet to conduct Enescu’s music. He is clearly a true believer and he understands every technical nuance and every expressive twist and turn” – The Telegraph.

Following his tenure as Music Director of Opéra de Marseille for nine years and Artistic and Chief Conductor of Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra for four years, this 2023/24 season, Lawrence Foster is invited to conduct an exciting variety of programmes. On the operatic field, he will return to the Enescu Festival for Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. His diverse symphonic programmes will include performances of Brahms, Prokofiev, Enescu, Copland, Korngold, Kurt Weill, Beethoven, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Mahler, Berg, and Penderecki, with orchestras such as Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Bruckner Orchester Linz, Würth Philharmonic Orchestra, and Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, in addition to his regular collaborations with Opéra Marseille and Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Lawrence Foster is a long-standing and iconic personality of classical music world. Awarded with the Koussevitzky Prize at Tanglewood in 1966, he became assistant conductor of Zubin Mehta at Los Angeles Philharmonic and chief Guest conductor of Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1969. Since then, he has been music director of Houston Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya, Gulbenkian Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Montpellier and Aspen Music Festival and School amongst many other positions.

Foster is particularly appreciated as an interpreter of the works of George Enescu and has made a comprehensive survey of commercial recordings of Enescu’s music. He served as artistic director of the George Enescu Festival from 1998 to 2001. In 2003, Foster was decorated by the Romanian President for services to Romanian music.

Foster has recorded extensively for Pentatone including Schumann’s symphonies, orchestral works by Kodály, Bartók and Ligeti, piano and violin concertos by Bruch, Korngold, Rachmaninov, Grieg and Chopin with various soloists, and operas such as Othello, Madame Butterfly, Fledermaus and Girl of the Golden West. His recording of Enescu’s Oedipe (EMI) was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque from the Académie Charles Cros in France.