New Orchestra Conducting Chair at the Reina Sofía School of Music (Madrid, Spain)

The Reina Sofía School of Music (Madrid, Spain), centre for high level professional education established for several years as the best in Europe, will have within its academic offer, from the 2024-2025 academic year, the new “Zubin Mehta” Chair in Orchestra Conducting, with the support of Aline Foriel-Destezet, that will give way to an advanced Postgraduate Diploma.

The Chair will be led by Nicolás Pasquet and will count on Jordi Francés and Miguel Ángel Cañamero as associate professors.

The student selection will take place through auditions, the application period of which will open in October 2023. Until then, the Reina Sofía School of Music continues working to define the admission process, the study programme and the orchestras which will be available in their practice during the study of the subject and will be released in the coming months, ahead of the application period.

NICOLÁS PASQUET

Professor Nicolás Pasquet was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, where he studied violin and conducting. He later completed his studies at the Superior Music Academies in Stuttgart and Nuremberg, Germany.

In 1986 and 1987 Pasquet was selected for the National Young Conductors Program by the German Council of Music, and in 1987, he was awarded the First Prize at the 37th International Conducting Competition in Besançon, France.

Nicolás Pasquet has led several international concert tours with different national and foreign orchestras, travelling to Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, Latin America (Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, USA, Australia, South-Korea, Namibia and several countries in Southeast Asia).

From 1993 to 1996, he became Chief Conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of Pécs, Hungary, with which he toured nationally and internationally, in addition to conducting the regular concert series in Pécs and Budapest. In 1998, he was awarded the Béla Bartók/Ditta Pásztory Prize and the Lászlo-Lajtha Prize in Budapest in honor of his support, promotion, and performances of Hungarian music.

From 1996 to 2001 Nicolás Pasquet was Chief Conductor and GMD (General Music Director) of the Philharmonic Orchestra in Neubrandenburg, Germany (Neubrandenburger Philharmonie), conducting its concert series, concert tours in Germany and abroad, and several CD recordings, as well as its regular collaboration with the Deutschlandfunk Cologne and the DeutschlandRadio Berlin.

Subsequently, Nicolás Pasquet was Chief Conductor of the Coburg State Theater Orchestra, where he was responsible for its concert series.

So far, Pasquet has recorded a large discography for the labels Marco Polo, Naxos and Beyer. With the Pécs Symphony, he recorded the complete series of symphonic works by the Hungarian composer Lászlo Lajtha (7 CDs) for the Marco Polo label. His most recent recording was the integrale of Pierre Rode’s works for violin and orchestra, with the violinist Friedemann Eichhorn and the Jena Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as the SWR orchestra Kaiserslautern.

In 1994, Nicolás Pasquet was appointed Professor for Conducting at the University of Music FRANZ LISZT in Weimar, Germany, where he teaches an international conducting class and is Chief Conductor of the symphony orchestra. He also has taught master classes in Spain, Austria, Brazil, Uruguay, Great Britain, Switzerland, Finland, Norway, Bulgaria, Romania and the Czech Republic and is a regular member of national and international competition juries.

Over the years, Pasquet has also developed an intense collaboration with youth and student orchestras such as the Baden-Württemberg, Bavarian and Hessen State Youth Orchestras, the Chamber Orchestra Belvedere in Weimar and the Interregional Youth Orchestra Baden-Württemberg/Ochsenhausen (IRO). He has conducted the South-East Asian Youth Chamber Orchestra, based at the Mahidol University, Salaya/Bangkok (Thailand), the Central American and Caribbean Youth Symphony Orchestra. Since 2009, Nicolás Pasquet is Chief Conductor of the Youth Symphony Orchestra of the State of Hesse, Germany (LJSO Hessen), a position he will hold until 2024.