Stéphane Denève is the newly appointed chief conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (SWR) and, since 2005, music cirector of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. He has made regular appearances with the Scottish orchestra at the Edinburgh International Festival and BBC Proms and the Festival Présences, and at celebrated venues throughout Europe including the Vienna Konzerthaus, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. He and the orchestra have made a number of acclaimed recordings together, including a survey of the works of Albert Roussel for Naxos, the first disc of which won a Diapason d’Or de l’année in 2007.

A graduate and prizewinner of the Paris Conservatoire, Stéphane Denève began his career as Sir Georg Solti’s assistant with the Orchestre de Paris and Paris National Opéra, also assisting Georges Prêtre and Seiji Ozawa during this time. In recent seasons he has appeared as a guest conductor with orchestras including the Boston Symphony, Bavarian Radio Symphony, London Symphony Orchestra, NDR Symphony Hamburg and Maggio Musicale Florence, with return engagements with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony, and Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin among others. In the field of opera he has led productions at the Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne, Opéra National de Paris, Netherlands Opera, La Monnaie, the Barcelona Gran Teatro de Liceu, the Teatro Comunale Bologna and Cincinnati Opera. He has also worked with a distinguished list of solo artists including Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Leif Ove Andsnes, Piotr Anderszewski, Emanuel Ax, Lars Vogt, Nikolai Lugansky, Paul Lewis, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Yo-Yo Ma, Nikolaj Znaider, Pinchas Zukerman, Leonidas Kavakos, Hilary Hahn, Vadim Repin, Gil Shaham, Nathalie Dessay and Nina Stemme.

Breaking the Mould: Stéphane Denève talks to Jeremy Siepmann