Viotti becomes chief conductor in Amsterdam
The 29-year-old Swiss-born Lorenzo Viotti will become Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and the Dutch National Opera from the 2021/22 season. He succeeds Marc Albrecht, who will hand over the baton at the end of the 2019/20 season after ten years.
Viotti completed a master's degree in conducting with Nicolás Pasquet, Gunter Kahlert and Martin Hoff at the Franz Liszt University of Music Weimar until 2015. He has been principal conductor of the Gulbenkian Symphony Orchestra Lisbon since the start of the 2018/19 season.
Viotti was born in Lausanne into a French-Italian family of musicians. He studied piano, singing and percussion in Lyon. He later attended Georg Mark's conducting class in Vienna and played as a percussionist in various orchestras, including the Vienna Philharmonic.
At the age of 25, he won the Young Conductors Award at the 2015 Salzburg Festival, the 11th International Conducting Competition of the Orchestra de Cadaqués and first prize in the conducting competition of the MDR Symphony Orchestra. In 2017, he was named Newcomer of the Year by the International Opera Award in London.
