Fabio Luisi
GRAMMY® Award winner Fabio Luisi launched his tenure as Louise W. & Edmund J. Kahn Music Director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO) at the start of the 2020/21 season. In January 2021, the DSO and Luisi announced an extension of the Music Director’s contract through the 2028/29 season. A maestro of major international standing, the Italian conductor is in his seventh season as Principal Conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, and in September 2022, he assumed the role of Principal Conductor of the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo. He previously served for six seasons as Principal Conductor of the Metropolitan Opera and nine seasons as General Music Director of the Zurich Opera.
Luisi’s 2023/24 season with the Dallas Symphony will feature monumental works including Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, Brahms’s A German Requiem and Liszt’s A Faust Symphony. He will also lead three world premieres: Jessie Montgomery’s Snapshots, Xi Wang’s Year 2020 (featuring Tine Thing Helseth, trumpet, and Karen Gomyo, violin) and Anna Clyne’s Piano Concerto (featuring Jeremy Denk). Luisi’s season will conclude with the first two operas in Wagner’s epic Ring cycle, Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. The DSO and Luisi will continue the complete cycle in the 2024/25 season, marking the first time an American orchestra has mounted the full Ring in recent history.
In October 2023, Luisi and the DSO will release the second of their recording projects, Brahms’s Third and Fourth Symphonies. Available through the DSO’s in-house label, DSO Live, this album joins the Fall 2022 release of Brahms’s First and Second Symphonies to complete the cycle. During the 2023/24 season, the DSO and Luisi will record two projects for future album release – Franz Schmidt’s epic The Book with Seven Seals and Saint-Saens’s Symphony No. 3, “Organ” which features the mighty Lay Family Concert Organ.
Other highlights of the 2023/24 season include his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic, concerts with the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, his return to the podium of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra followed by a tour in Japan and Korea and several concerts with the NHK Symphony Orchestra (Tokyo). With the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, he will embark on a new recording series of the complete music of Aleksandr Scriabin for the renowned Deutsche Grammophon label in addition to the season concerts in Copenhagen.
The conductor received his first GRAMMY® Award in March 2013 for his leadership of the last two operas of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, when Deutsche Grammophon’s DVD release of the full cycle, recorded live at the Met, was named Best Opera Recording of 2012. In February 2015, the Philharmonia Zurich launched its Philharmonia Records label with three Luisi recordings: Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, a double album surveying Wagner’s Preludes and Interludes, and a DVD of Verdi’s Rigoletto. Subsequent releases have included a survey of Rachmaninov’s Four Piano Concertos and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with soloist Lise de la Salle, and a rare recording of the original version of Bruckner’s monumental Symphony No. 8. Luisi’s extensive discography also includes rare Verdi operas (Jérusalem, Alzira and Aroldo), Salieri’s La locandiera, Bellini’s I puritani and I Capuleti e i Montecchi with Anna Netrebko and Elīna Garanča for Deutsche Grammophon, and the symphonic repertoire of Honegger, Respighi and Liszt. He has recorded all the symphonies and the oratorio Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln by neglected Austrian composer Franz Schmidt, several works by Richard Strauss for Sony Classical, and an award – winning account of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony with the Staatskapelle Dresden.
Born in Genoa in 1959, Luisi began piano studies at the age of four and received his diploma from the Conservatorio Niccolò Paganini in 1978. He later studied conducting with Milan Horvat at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Graz. Named both Cavaliere della Repubblica Italiana and Commendatore della Stella d’Italia for his role in promoting Italian culture abroad, in 2014 he was awarded the Grifo d’Oro, the highest honor given by the city of Genoa, for his contributions to the city’s cultural legacy. Off the podium, Luisi is an accomplished composer whose Saint Bonaventure Mass received its world premiere at St. Bonaventure University, followed by its New York City premiere in the MetLiveArts series, with the Buffalo Philharmonic and Chorus. As reported by the New York Times, CBS Sunday Morning and elsewhere, he is also a passionate maker of perfumes, which he produces in a one-person operation, FLPARFUMS.COM.