“Everything he touches emerges fresh and newly minted; everything has a new perspective… the level of sophistication that characterised a marvellous concert was truly a thing of wonder.” The Herald
The last few years have seen Andrew Manze’s rapid emergence as one of the most stimulating and inspirational conductors of his generation. He is driven by a passion for great music from the baroque to the contemporary irrespective of date but his distinguished career as one of the world’s leading baroque violinists allows him to draw upon a specialist knowledge of period performance to inform his interpretations where he feels this appropriate. His unique skills as a communicator have also marked him out as a particular favourite with both audiences and orchestras.
As a guest conductor Manze has regular relationships with a number of leading international orchestras including the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Munich Philharmonic, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony, Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Scottish and Swedish Chamber Orchestras. Manze’s future guest conductor engagements include debuts with the Finnish Radio Symphony, Gothenburg Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic, Danish Radio Symphony, Residentie Orkest and Hallé Orchestra.
Manze has been Principal Conductor of the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, Sweden since September 2006. He has recorded a number of CDs with them including Beethoven’s Eroica (Harmonia Mundi) and Stenhammer Piano Concerti (Hyperion) and the recording of a Brahms cycle for CPO is currently underway. Manze also holds the position of Principal Guest Conductor of the Norwegian Radio Orchestra and he assumes the role of Associate Guest Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra from the 10-11 season.
Engagements in autumn 2009 included his debut with the Netherlands Radio Kammerphilharmonie which led to immediate reengagements and a return to the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester in Berlin, City of Birmingham Symphony and the Radio Philharmonie Hannover des NDR. In spring 2010 he returns to work with the Munich Philharmonic and tours with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra for concerts in Vienna, Essen and Wurzburg. He also makes his debut with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.
After reading Classics at Cambridge University, Manze studied the violin and rapidly became a leading specialist in the world of historical performance practice. He became Associate Director of The Academy of Ancient Music in 1996 and then Artistic Director of The English Concert from 2003 to 2007.
Manze has released an astonishing variety of CDs, many of them award-winning. They include Mozart violin concertos, Handel arias with Mark Padmore, Mozart’s Eine kleine Nacht Musik, Vivaldi’s little-known Viennese La cetra and a recently unearthed Biber mass, as well as concertos by Bach, Handel and Geminiani. Manze’s long-standing collaboration with his duo partner Richard Egarr won great acclaim with their recordings of sonatas by Bach, Handel, Pandolfi, Rebel, Biber, Mozart and Schubert. These discs have won many prizes, amongst them two Gramophone Awards, three Edisons, the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, a BBC Music Magazine Award and a 2003 Grammy nomination.
Manze is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and a Visiting Professor at the Oslo Academy and has contributed to new editions of sonatas and concertos by Mozart and Bach published by Bärenreiter and Breitkopf and Härtel. He also teaches, edits and writes about music, as well as broadcasting regularly on radio and television.
Andrew Manze is represented by Intermusica.
March 2010 / 509 words. Not to be altered without permission. Please destroy all previous biographical material.
Conducting Programmes
Deutsches Sinfonieorchester Berlin
HANDEL Water Music (selections)
BRITTEN Sinfonia da Requiem Op.20
PURCELL Orchestral Suite
BRITTEN Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra
Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra
VALEN Piano Concerto
J.S. BACH Piano Concerto in D minor, BWV1052
BRUCKNER Symphony No.1
Scottish Chamber Orchestra
WEBERN Five Pieces, Op.5 (string orch version)
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No.3
WEBERN Five Pieces, Op.5 (string orch version)
SCHUBERT Symphony No.6
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
GRIEG Peer Gynt Suite No.1
ELGAR Cello Concerto
STENHAMMAR Symphony No.2
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
BEAMISH Homage à Brahms
MOZART Piano Concerto No.17, K.453
BRAHMS Symphony No.4 Op.98
Danish National Symphony Orchestra
BO HOLTEN Gaudy Pageant
BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto
SCHUBERT Symphony No.7*
* (a score by Schubert survives with some parts fully orchestrated and others in skeleton-score format. Reconstructed by Brian Newbould)
Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra
J. G. PISENDEL Sinfonia in B flat major
W. F. BACH Adagio and Fugue
ZELENKA Overture, 'Hipocondrie'
VIVALDI Concerto in G minor, RV.577 'per l'orchestra di Dresda'
LOTTI Crucifixus (instrumental version by Andrew Manze)
SHOSTAKOVICH Chamber Symphony in C minor, Op.110a (arr.Barshai)
Seattle Symphony Orchestra
CORELLI Concerto Grosso, Op.6, No.3 in C minor
TIPPETT Fantasia Concertante on a theme of Corelli
TALLIS Hymn 'When rising from the bed of death'
ELGAR Introduction & Allegro
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
MOZART Symphony No.10 in G major, K.74
MOZART Sinfonia concertante, K.364
MOZART Symphony No.40 in G minor, K.550
Munich Philharmonic
PURCELL A sequence of pieces arranged/edited by Britten/Manze
BRITTEN Four Sea Interludes
BRITTEN Sinfonia da Requiem
BRITTEN Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra: Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Henry Purcell
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
SCHUBERT Overture in an Italian style in D Major
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No.3
SCHUBERT Symphony No.6
Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra
DUKAS Fanfare from 'La Péri'
JEAN FÉRY REBEL 'Chaos' from the Elements
DEBUSSY Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
BERLIOZ Symphonie Fantastique Op.14
Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra
BRAHMS Academic Festival Overture
MAHLER Lieder eines Fahrenden Gesellen
BRAHMS Four Serious Songs
WAGNER Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Overture)
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Seattle Symphony Orchestra / Tallis, Corelli, Vaughan Williams, Elgar
“Who would have expected a program built around 20th-century English music for strings to rouse a Seattle audience to a standing ovation? There were several reasons for the vociferous cheers that greeted Andrew Manze's debut conducting the Seattle Symphony, and they were all good ones.
… Manze introduced the various works with a wit that had the audience eating out of his hand before he even started to conduct. And then, quite aside from the quality of the music itself, there is Manze's own musical gift to consider. Formerly known mainly as a violinist with a specialty in period-instrument performance, he now seems likely to become a conductor of high distinction. He has hands, as orchestra players say. He has charisma, and he has patience. Trusting the music and the audience, he never rushes sustained passages for fear that the former may lose its hold on the latter. …
Especially rewarding was the performance of the Tallis Fantasia. … Keeping the melodic line smooth, he evoked in this wonderful music the inward ecstasy that is peculiarly and authentically English.
No wonder the audience cheered.”
Seattle Times, May 2010
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra / Brahms & Schumann
“After what transpired in the City Hall yesterday afternoon, there is one thing we can say about Andrew Manze, the BBC SSO’s new associate guest conductor, who takes up his post later this year: with Manze around musical life is not going to be dull.
The man is spring-loaded. He doesn’t conduct conventionally (whatever that might be). It’s a whole-body exercise, from his arms to his hips and beyond. He is so animated that at one point, quite irreverently, the thought flashed through my brain: I hope his boots are nailed to the podium or he might take off and bang his head on the roof.
The man is a total energiser. He launched the SSO into the introduction of Brahms’s First Symphony with such force and velocity that I inadvertently yelped and sat bolt upright, giving the chap next to me a bit of a start (sorry, sir).
There were rough edges to the ensemble, but it was electrifying, edge of the seat stuff. That said, attack is not Manze’s only mode. He gave the music of the slow movement, pacy though it was, acres of space, outstandingly in the glorious duet passages between leader Peter Thomas and first horn David Flack.
And, as exemplified in the elegance of third movement, he does grace and poise too. But there’s something raw and vital about Manze’s energy, and it was back in the blazing, closing pages of the finale.”
The Herald, March 2010
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin / Bach & Mendelssohn
“[Andrew Manze] proved once again beyond any doubt that he has thoroughly penetrated the language of the Baroque. It was astonishing to hear how he shaped the architecture of Bach’s suite for orchestra no.3; and how he dissected the polyphony without removing even the tiniest breath of life. And the DSO followed his interpretation with the greatest of rigour, not once losing their composure, even in the festive Bourrée movement. After the interval, the academic charm of the final counterpoint from “The art of fugue” did not work against the pleasure of the music-making, but rather complemented it. The famous BACH theme was performed as a free-spirited study; a theory of harmony and counterpoint in the liveliest of forms.”
Der Tagesspiegel, April 2009
Scottish Chamber Orchestra / Mendelssohn, Mozart & Schubert
“Performers become conductors with mixed results. Andrew Manze, who first came to prominence as a violinist specialising in early music, is one who has made the transition quite brilliantly. In this opening concert of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's Mendelssohn 200 series, his dynamic authority over the players elicited playing of the very highest distinction.”
The Scotsman, January 2009
“The conducting career of violinist Andrew Manze is rocketing, and in every bar of each piece he directed on Friday with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra you could see and hear why. Everything he touches emerges fresh and newly minted; everything has a new perspective; and, with the SCO at its most responsive, homogeneous in ensemble, and pristine in its balance and articulation, the level of sophistication that characterised a marvellous concert was truly a thing of wonder.”
The Herald, January 2009
Scottish Chamber Orchestra / Beethoven
“The spotlight was back on Manze for Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. And once again he had something unique to say. Forget the broad outline, which was intelligent and proportionally paced. But within the detail, such nuggets as the vibrato-less string opening of the second movement made you sit up and listen intently. Manze is one conductor worth watching.”
The Scotsman, January 2008
Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra / Beethoven Symphony No.3 ‘Eroica’ (Harmonia Mundi)
"Andrew Manze has had the ingenious idea of coupling the Eroica with the set of contredanses in which the theme of the symphony’s finale first appeared, and with the finale of Beethoven’s ballet score The Creatures of Prometheus, the melody’s second appearance. What makes the disc exceptional, however, is the superb clarity and incisiveness of the performances. The splendid Swedish orchestra plays the Eroica as if discovering and revelling in its beauty and audacity for the first time. Manze sets a spanking tempo for the opening movement, but always gives the music room to breathe, and the rest is equally inspiring."
Sunday Times, June 2008
"A robust Beethoven 'Eroica' that motors relentlessly onwards, powered by the intellectual might of British conductor Andrew Manze. The opening movement, with its richness of harmonic ambiguity, is persuasively argued as Manze finds common cause between Beethoven's vivid harmonic turnarounds and the hard-hitting transparency of his orchestration. The second movement funeral march is imposing and lingers in the imagination, while the final two movements are filled with deeply authentic, coolly controlled mania. The Twelve Contretänze contain material that Beethoven re-worked into his Creatures of Prometheus Ballet, which in turn found its way into the 'Eroica'. Skeletons from Beethoven's cupboard - Manze's got the key."
Classic FM Magazine, May 2008
“Manze takes a surprisingly Romantic view of the Eroica, with a lingering account of its funeral march second movement that allows the trumpets to ring out to overwhelming effect in the C major blaze of sound immediately preceding the first reprise of the initial funeral march theme. The remainder of the Symphony is no less impressive, with accomplished playing from the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra. This is an Eroica to set alongside recent recommendations from Paavo Järvi and the Bremen Kammerphilharmonie (RCA), and Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra. Manze’s disc shouldn’t be missed.”
BBC Music Magazine, April 2008
"Andrew Manze possesses a lightness of touch in his conducting that never loses contact with the depth of a musical work, even one so enigmatic and potentially hazardous as Beethoven's Eroica Symphony . The mud-free opening of this fresh new version of the symphony with the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra exhibits that very quality, its exuberant energy establishing a momentum that seems natural and organic, without losing the essential profundity of the work. The funeral march is solemn, but with an inbuilt optimism; the scherzo is unstoppably effervescent; the finale has a petulant quality that says something about the defiant Beethoven that is way above the mundane. Manze rounds off this exceptional disc with the 12 Contretänze and the finalé from The Creatures of Prometheus."
The Scotsman, April 2008
“Radical rubato, violent coups d’archets, beautiful woodwind detailing, and a strikingly slow ‘Marche funèbre’ contribute to a sense of freshness and dyanism, while the ’12 Contretänze’ and the finale of ‘Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus’ illustrate how one modest melody ignited a music revolution.”
The Independent, March 2008
“It seems almost an anomaly to suggest that a new recording of the Eroica might be fresh, perceptive, distinctive and exciting. Yet the handsomely packaged release from Harmonia Mundi of the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra under the direction of British violinist-conductor Andrew Manze is all these things... This Eroica may confidently take its place with some of the finest available – those of Weingarter, Furtwängler and Abbado, for example – and bears a comparison with other historically informed readings, such as those of Harnoncourt and Gardiner. Very highly recommended.”
International Record Review, March 2008
Scottish Chamber Orchestra / Mozart's Requiem
"[Manze] lovingly shaped the individual movements into a dramatically satisfying whole... it was the sensitivity to detail - the sudden celestial quiet of the Voca Me after the opening fury of the Confutatis, the increasing magnitude of each successive declamation of Sanctus - that made the performance stand out."
The Guardian, May 2006
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