This autumn's full evening with Wagner includes revolutionary trumpets, seduction and humor.
Wagner: Overtures and arias
Andris Poga, conductor
Oliver Zwarg, baritone
Andris Poga is the Chief Conductor of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra. He was the Music Director of the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra from 2013 till 2021 and continues to collaborate with the LNSO as its Artistic Advisor.
Highlights of recent years have included concerts with the leading orchestras of Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Scandinavia. After the first successful collaborations he has become a regular guest at the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester Hamburg, WDR Sinfonieorchester Cologne, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo and many others. He has also conducted the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Gewandhausorchester, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, Dallas Symphony.
The season of 2024/25 includes the subscription concert series with both the SSO and LNSO, returns to the Orchestre National de France, WDR Sinfonieorchester, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Hamburg Symphoniker among others. Andris will make his debuts with the Iceland Symphony, Turku Philharmonic, Düsseldorf Symphony and other orchestras in Europe and Japan. The notable soloists will include instrumentalists Frank Peter Zimmermann, David Fray, Jan Lisiecki, Jean-Guihen Queyras and singers Julia Bullock, Miina-Liisa Värelä, Alfred Walker.
In 2010, Andris Poga was the First Prize winner of the Evgeny Svetlanov International Conducting Competition, which thrust him into the international scene. He became an assistant to Paavo Järvi at the Orchestre de Paris and he also served as the assistant conductor for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Andris has graduated the conducting department of the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music. He studied philosophy at the University of Latvia and conducting at the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts.
Oliver Zwarg is one of Europe’s leading heldenbaritones with an operatic repertoire including roles such as: Hans Sachs, Dutchman, Amfortas, Kurwenal, Alberich, Strauss‘ Barak, Jochanaan and Orest, Berg’s Wozzeck, Mozart‘s Figaro, Leporello and Papageno, Verdi’s Amonasro, Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Scarpia and Debussy’s Golaud, which in 2007 brought him multiple nominations for the German magazine Opernwelt’s Artist of the Year. Recently he also added, Wotan, Wanderer and Iago to his extensive list of roles.
Having trained in Stuttgart, Bremen-born Zwarg enjoys a close relationship with the city’s opera house and, within Germany, he is also a regular visitor to the opera houses of Cologne (where he had an outstanding success as Alberich, a role he repeated when the company visited the Shanghai Expo is 2010), Berlin (Staatsoper unter den Linden and Komische Oper), Dresden, Munich, Hamburg, Darmstadt and Chemnitz. Internationally, he has appeared at the opera houses of Barcelona, Madrid, Copenhagen, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Lille and Liège, and at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, while his festival dates have included Salzburg (Easter and Summer festivals), Lucerne, Edinburgh, Ludwigsburg and the Wiener Festwochen.
Oliver Zwarg performs with conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle, Christian Thielemann, Daniele Gatti, Marco Armiliato, Lothar Zagrosek, Ingo Metzmacher, Markus Stenz and Paul McCreesh and works with stage directors such as Calixto Bieito, Claus Guth, Michael Hampe, Stefan Herheim, Peter Konwitschny, Nikolaus Lehnhoff, Robert Carsen, Achim Freyer and Jossi Wieler.
