“The highlight was Mr. Nielsen’s cool, incisive and gripping conducting. He drew dynamic playing from the excellent orchestra and seemed at home in a challenging score that blurs distinctions between opera, musical theater and 1920s German cabaret, evoking everything from Bach fugues to the foxtrot, from medieval chant to the tango, from Stravinsky orchestral barbarism to jazzy banjo and saxophone.”
The New York Times
“Of course, the performers wouldn't be able to show off their talents if it weren't for the Boston Lyric Opera Orchestra, conducted by Erik Nielsen. The dexterity of the instrumentalists at the BLO never ceases to amaze me. I also appreciated greatly Nielsen's sensitivity to the actors on stage. Not once did the orchestra overpower the singers, but also not once did the orchestra cripple under the vocalists' gusto, even during the powerful and bombastic parts where the singers were giving it all that they could muster. Finely attuned to the rest of the show and also to his musicians, Nielsen gave a masterful performance himself, even if it was hidden under the pit with only a gleaming baton occasionally rising above the ground to signify his hard work interpreting Strauss' operatic masterpiece.”
The Justice ...
read full bioErik Nielsen, born in Iowa in 1977, joined the Frankfurt Opera in 2002, and in 2008/9 took up the position of Kapellmeister there. Prior to moving to Frankfurt, he played harp in the Berlin Philharmonic as a member of its Orchester-Akademie. He studied conducting at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and received his bachelor’s degree as a double-major in oboe and harp at The Juilliard School in New York.
During the last two seasons his repertoire at the Frankfurt Opera has included Le Nozze di Figaro, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, La Clemenza di Tito, Così fan tutte, Tosca, Angels in America, Curlew River, La bohème, Lucia di Lammermoor, Lohengrin, Hartmann’s Simplicius Simplicissimus, and a double-bill of chamber operas by Holst and Vaughan Williams.
During the 2007/8 season he conducted concerts with both the Frankfurt and Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestras as well as a concert at the Heidelberg “Frühling” Festival featuring works by Pintscher, Rihm and Saariaho. In the summer 2007 he attended Tanglewood, conducting orchestral and chamber concerts and assisting James Levine with Don Carlo He returned to Tanglewood in 2008, where he conducted a production of Weill’s Mahagonny.
In January 2009 Erik Nielsen made his London debut conducting The Magic Flute for English National Opera. In September 2009 he was awarded the $25,000 Solti Fellowship by the US Solti Foundation.
In March 2010 he made his US opera debut with Ariadne auf Naxos for Boston Lyric Opera and in December 2010 he will conduct The Magic Flute for the Metropolitan Opera New York. European engagements in 2010/11 include the German premiere of Reimann’s latest opera Medea in Frankfurt and his Dresden debut with Henze’s Gisela at the Semper Oper. In April 2010 he will made his UK concert debut with the Northern Sinfonia.
In 2005-6, Nielsen served as assistant to Christoph Eschenbach on the production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle directed by Bob Wilson at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. In previous seasons he has conducted the Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt and in Brussels (Ars musica festival) and led the project, Offenbachiade, resulting in the performance of his original orchestrations of six operas by Offenbach at the Opera Frankfurt.
In the US, he has conducted the New World Symphony, the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra of the American Academy of Conducting as Aspen, the World Youth Symphony Orchestra at Interlochen, and the Youth Symphony of Kansas City. His European conducting debut took place in Victoria Hall with the Geneva Chamber Orchestra. He also conducted the Orchestre Pasdeloup in Théâtre des Champs-Elysées and the orchestra of the Oper Frankfurt. As an orchestral musician he has played professionally under conductors such as Abbado, Barenboim, Conlon, Dutoit, Janssons, Levine, Maazel, Mackerras, Masur, Nagano, Previn, Rattle, Salonen, Slatkin, Tilson Thomas and Zinman.
