WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln
„She is the most successful conductor of the next generation,“ recently stated the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and it was heard on Deutschlandfunk: “She sweeps across the podium through the centuries of music history just as through the top European orchestras.” Indeed! The French conductor Marie Jacquot – just 35 years young – can already look back on an impressive career in opera and concert. After first guest conducting since 2022, she will become the chief conductor of the WDR Sinfonieorchester starting from the 2026/27 season. She will also join us at gVe in spring 2027. For the virtuosic symphonic-concert repertoire, she has alongside her the brilliant Dutch piano duo of brothers Lucas and Arthur Jussen, who are already making their fourth appearance in Erlangen since 2023. For Marie Jacquot, it will be her debut with us.
A native of Paris, Marie Jacquot was born in 1990 in the metropolis on the Seine. Her parents placed value on her and her two siblings engaging equally in sports and music from an early age. Marie received trombone and piano lessons while also taking tennis lessons. And she quickly excelled: As a teenager, Marie Jacquot was among the best junior players in French tennis and even participated in the Junior French Open at the Roland-Garros stadium in Paris. “Tennis always brought me joy,” she recounts, “but at some point, the fun was gone, and only the pressure to be better remained. There was only the competitive aspect left and no longer the joy of playing.” At 16, she abandoned her plans for a professional tennis career and turned entirely to music. At the Paris Conservatoire, she initially studied trombone, then conducting at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna and at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Weimar. She also participated in masterclasses with Simon Rattle, Bertrand de Billy, Zubin Mehta, and others. At the Bavarian State Opera, she was assistant to Kirill Petrenko during the rehearsals of the opera “South Pole” by Miroslav Srnka.
Marie Jacquot began her conducting career with her first permanent position in our region: from 2016 to 2019, she was the first concertmaster and deputy of the general music director at the Mainfranken Theater Würzburg. She then moved to the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf as a conductor, where she remained until 2022. In 2023, she was appointed First Guest Conductor of the Vienna Symphony. In 2024, she simultaneously became Chief Conductor of the Royal Danish Orchestra and thus the head of the Royal Danish Opera Copenhagen. With the start of the 2026/27 season, she will also be the Chief Conductor of the WDR Sinfonieorchester in Cologne. As a guest, Marie Jacquot has also conducted the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, and the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, as well as the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in Sweden and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in the USA.
Marie Jacquot has a rich and stylistically broad repertoire. The core lies in music from the Baroque to the modern era of the 20th century – from Purcell to Prokofiev – but she also frequently conducts contemporary music of our time. Of course, she has her favorites and preferences. “Bruckner has a special place in my heart,” admits the musician, who has her primary residence in Graz. “Richard Strauss is also among them,” she adds, summarizing: “My great preference lies in German Romanticism – sometimes I feel that I possess a German soul.”
Oberon's Horn and Four Hands for Mendelssohn
The concert in Erlangen in April 2027 is also entirely focused on German Romanticism in the first part – the German early Romanticism. Carl Maria von Weber, the creator of the German romantic opera, is represented with the overture to his last stage work, the fairy opera “Oberon” from 1826. It tells a complicated story about the elf king Oberon with his wondrous magical horn and the fairy queen Titania. With powerful operatic drama and romantic mood painting, the overture leads into the turbulent action. The E-major concert for two pianos and orchestra by Mendelssohn was created in 1823. He composed it at the age of 14 for his sister Fanny’s 18th birthday and delved deep into the treasure chest of virtuosic piano playing with bravura runs, fast passages, and full chords – a perfect showcase for the Jussen piano duo. “Felix and Fanny were super pianists, and you can hear it in the piece,” says Arthur Jussen. “In it, you can hear how the two converse and sometimes even get into arguments: I can do it better! – No, I can do it better. I can even do it more!” The answer? Lucas and Arthur Jussen can do it best!
From the German early Romanticism of the first part of the evening, the program moves after the break to the neo-Romantic music around 1940. It remains romantic in any case! Besides “Romeo and Juliet,” “Cinderella” (or “Aschenbrödel”) is the most famous and well-known ballet music by Sergei Prokofiev, one of the great classics of 20th-century music. From the full-length fairy tale ballet op. 89, Prokofiev later assembled three orchestral suites for concert use. They present the most beautiful moments and greatest hits of the ballet, in a way, in a continuous flow or – in other words – like pearls strung together on a chain.
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
