Jaap Van Zweden to leave NY Philharmonic in 2024
Jaap van Zweden, former music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, announced on Wednesday that he will be leaving the New York Philharmonic at the end of the 2023-2024 season. His six-year tenure will be the shortest since the late Pierre Boulez in the 1970s.
In a letter to the orchestra reported by the Associated Press, van Zweden wrote: “COVID has changed so much, including thoughts about my own future, my life and my family.”
He told the New York Times, “It’s not frustration, it’s not anger, it’s not a difficult situation. It’s just out of freedom. “
Between COVID and international travel restrictions, van Zweden spent the last 18 months mostly in his native Netherlands.
Van Zweden took over the Philharmonic after conducting the Dallas Symphony for 10 years and oversaw a dramatic rise in the standards of the Dallas Orchestra. He took the DSO on a European tour, took it to Carnegie Hall and made several recordings with it.
In addition to the pandemic that paralyzed New York performances for more than a year, the Philharmonic is faced with the challenge of playing in alternative locations while their home, David Geffen Hall, undergoes a major renovation. An opening is currently planned for autumn 2022, with van Zweden taking over the lead.
Van Zweden, 60, is also Music Director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, where his contract runs from 2023 to 2024.
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