Dominik Beykirch

Biography

The 32-year-old conductor Dominik Beykirch has been shaping the artistic profile of the Deutsches Nationaltheater (DNT) and the Staatskapelle Weimar since the 2015/16 season. Initially engaged as Kapellmeister, he was appointed "Chief Conductor Music Theatre" in 2020. With the 2023/2024 season, he will continue his ongoing work as music director.

Highlights of the 2023/2024 music theatre season at the DNT for Dominik Beykirch are the new productions of Richard Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer directed by Barbora Horáková and Giacomo Puccini's opera cycle Il Trittico (director: Dirk Schmeding). The programme also includes Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos in Martin G. Berger's award-winning production (FAUST Prize 2020) and Vincenzo Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi, a joint work with Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito from spring 2023.

In the symphonic field, Dominik Beykirch will perform with pianist Frank Dupree, among others. The two artists share an intensive collaboration, particularly audible on the CD with Nikolai Kapustin's Fifth Piano Concerto (Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Capriccio), which was released in February 2023. For this award-winning recording (International Classical Music Award, Diapason d'Or), Dominik Beykirch was nominated as Conductor of the Year for the OPUS-Klassik. Further CD recordings with works by the Ukrainian composer are planned. Dominik Beykirch returns to the Dresden Philharmonic and the Brandenburg State Orchestra Frankfurt, among others, as a guest conductor. In Dresden, he will conduct works by Richard Strauss, Korngold, and Rachmaninoff (soloist: Cameron Carpenter) in Potsdam and Frankfurt/Oder works by Haydn, Orff and Mendelssohn.

With his opera conductorships at the DNT, Dominik Beykirch repeatedly sets internationally acclaimed standards. For instance, on his initiative, the opera Samson by the Swiss composer Joachim Raff was performed for the first time after 170 years in October 2022 (directed by Calixto Bieito), and the radio recording was broadcast in Austria and Switzerland, among other countries. In the 2019/2020 season, Dominik Beykirch celebrated great success with the opera Lanzelot by Paul Dessau, which was performed for the first time in 40 years. The journal "Opernwelt" awarded the production directed by Peter Konwitschny as "Rediscovery of the Year" and at the same time nominated Dominik Beykirch as "Conductor of the Year". The CD label Audite released the recording of the entire opera in January 2023. The recording, which received much attention from the press, was awarded the German Record Critics' Prize and the "CD of the Year" ("Opernwelt"), among others. His musical direction of new productions such as Aida (director: Andrea Moses) or L'italiana in Algeri (director: Tobias Kratzer), was also met with great response from audiences and the press.

Dominik Beykirch has already worked with numerous renowned orchestras, such as the symphony orchestras of the HR, MDR, WDR and SWR (German broadcast services), the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Duisburg Philharmonic, the Jena Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Halle, the Bremen Philharmonic, the Nuremberg Symphony, the Philharmonie Zuidnederland (Netherlands), the Württemberg Philharmonic Reutlingen, the State Orchestra Rheinische Philharmonie, the Philharmonie Südwestfalen, the Hofer Symphony and the Folkwang Chamber Orchestra Essen. He has also been a guest conductor at the Leipzig Opera, the Kassel State Theatre and the Chemnitz Theatre and has conducted numerous performances at the Dresden State Operetta. He has also conducted important rehearsals for Markus Poschner, Andres Orozco-Estrada and Christoph Eschenbach, among others, and worked with soloists such as Jens Peter Maintz, Claudio Bohórquez, Nemanja Radulovic, Harriet Krijgh, Michael Barenboim and Jan Vogler.

In 2020, the album Clarinet Concertos was released on the Berlin Classics label, on which clarinettist Sebastian Manz interprets the Clarinet Concerto by Danish composer Carl Nielsen, composed in 1928, together with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken under the direction of Dominik Beykirch. Dominik Beykirch also recorded Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf with the Dresden Philharmonic for Berlin Classics (narrator: Malte Arkona).

His numerous awards include the second prize of 10,000 euros at the German Conducting Prize 2017, first prize at the 6th German University Competition for Orchestral Conducting, as well as sponsorship prizes from the publishing houses Bärenreiter and Breitkopf & Härtel and the Ernst von Schuch Prize. Dominik Beykirch was a scholarship holder in the Conductors' Forum of the German Music Council and was on the artist list "Maestros of Tomorrow" from 2016 to 2019. He is also an alumnus of the German National Academic Foundation and a consultant for choral symphonies at Werkgemeinschaft Musik e.V. In the 2013/14 season, he was Michael Sanderling's assistant at the Dresden Philharmonic.

Dominik Beykirch completed his musical education at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in the conducting classes of Prof. Nicolás Pasquet, Prof. Gunter Kahlert and Martin Hoff in Weimar. At the same time, he received enriching artistic impulses from numerous master classes with Bernard Haitink, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Ton Koopman, among others. He now passes on his knowledge as a lecturer for the German Music Council (Conducting Forum) and as part of a teaching assignment at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Academy of Music and Theatre in Leipzig.

Status: October 2023