PPO chooses a new music director and principal conductor

THE SEARCH for the new music director and principal conductor of the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra (PPO) has ended. The Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) has announced that Polish conductor Grzegorz Nowak will assume the management of the orchestra.

Mr. Nowak takes over from Yoshikazu Fukumura, who concluded his tenure in 2021.

After the Japanese conductor left, the CCP began the search in 2022, forming a search committee to screen candidates for the position. Both the CCP and the PPO were looking for a music director who exemplifies solid musicianship, a strong sense of leadership, artistic discipline and respect for peers, extensive program repertoire, and orchestral rapport.

Mr. Nowak’s first concert with the PPO as its music director and principal conductor will be on Sept. 15, 7:30 p.m., at the Samsung Performing Arts Theater in Circuit, Makati. The concert, which will kick off the 39th concert season, will see the PPO performing French composer Hector Berlioz’s Roman Carnival, Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto, with guest performer pianist Mark Beddington, and Italian composer Ottorino Respighi’s Pini di Roma.

The PPO’s 38th concert season served as the proving ground for five shortlisted conductors, who were potential leaders of the orchestra.

Mr. Nowak conducted the second concert of the series, on Oct. 7, 2022, at the CCP Main Theater. He conducted the PPO as they performed pieces by National Artist Lucio San Pedro, Peter Illich Tchaikovsky, and Igor Stravinsky, featuring young violinist Vincent Owen Romanban as a soloist on Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, Op. 64, E minor.

As the new music director, Mr. Nowak will be responsible for the preparation and implementation of the PPO’s thrusts, programs, concert season, training of musicians, and other related activities. He is expected to conduct at least 10 to 12 performances per year, including the regular PPO season, outreach tours, the Young People’s Concert Series, and other special CCP events. He will also be in charge of a development program for the PPO members and ensure that the level of musicianship and artistic quality meets the standard.

Mr. Nowak was principal associate conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. He was the music director of the Polish National Opera in Warsaw, Poland, from 2017 to 2020, and other orchestras in Poland, Germany, Switzerland, and the USA. He has recorded orchestral music on over 80 CDs that have received awards and five-star ratings.

He studied conducting, composition, and violin at the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Academy of Music in Poznan, Poland, before receiving his doctorate degree at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. He obtained a Serge Koussevitsky Fellowship at Tanglewood, where he later became Kurt Masur’s assistant. He has conducted various orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic.

He won the Ernest Ansermet Conducting Competition in Geneva, bagging all the special awards, including the Grand Prix Patek Philippe, the Rolex Prize, the Swiss Prize, and the American Patronage Prize. Since then, he has conducted some of the world’s finest orchestras and served as Music Director for the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, the SWR Radio Orchestra in Germany, the Sinfonia Helvetica in Switzerland, and the Musique et Amitié Festival.

Tickets to the Sept. 15 concerts will be available at CCP Blackbox Theater Box Office and at TicketWorld. Visit the CCP website ( www.culturalcenter.gov.ph ) for more information.