After all, there have been women in the orchestra and its management since the very beginning more than 100 years ago. In an interview for the magazine Gramophone, the conductor recalled what was going through her head when she accepted the offer: “ I felt joy, of course, but also responsibility: taking on those incredible musicians and then thinking about the direction of the orchestra, its role in the city and everything.” No one in Birmingham was concerned that they were hiring a woman. The young artist at the helm of the prestigious orchestra provoked great expectations, but the orchestra did not doubt her even for an instant. The critic Norman Lebrecht, known for his provocative commentary, wrote after her engagement that next to the CBSO, London’s orchestras are now going to look “ stale and middle-aged”. This was a major event for the world of classical music, and not just in the United Kingdom. She took over the orchestra when she was 29 years old. She is appearing at the Prague Spring Festival as the holder of the title of 2020 Opus Klassik Conductor of the Year, a prestigious German award. She was the winner of the 2012 Salzburg Competition for Young Conductors, and since 2016 she has been the music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. The Lithuanian conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla is one of the greatest artistic figures of her generation. Mutual trust creates a space for exploration Her conducting is as natural as breathing, and she follows the melodic lines as if she were singing”, he adds.
“ The first time we played it together, I felt an extraordinary affinity. “ I’m enormously pleased to be performing the work in Prague with the CBSO and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla”, he says enthusiastically.
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“ Sir Edward Elgar’s music has always been a central part of the CBSO’s repertoire-indeed the Orchestra’s first full symphonic concert in 1920 featured Sir Edward conducting his Cello Concerto,” he explains. Playing the solo part will be the French cellist Gautier Capuçon, a Prague Spring Festival artist-in-residence. Seven years have passed, and the conductor is returning to the festival as a widely acclaimed figure of classical music whose face has appeared on the cover of perhaps every prestigious music journal and whose activities are the topic of lively discussion. “ Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla has followed in Sir Simon’s footsteps, and has a particular love of the beautiful Symphony No.6 by Bruckner”, says Maddock. She was conducting Kremerata Baltica, and it was Gidon Kremer who played a substantial role in her musical career,” says Třeštík. “ But this will not be her first appearance-she already performed at the festival in 2014.
“She is one of today’s most interesting and most inspirational musicians”, says Prague Spring Festival programming director Josef Třeštík. This time, leading the orchestra from Birmingham in a programme combining the music of Edward Elgar and Anton Bruckner will be its present music director Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla. It was with this very orchestra that Rattle began his stellar career. “ It will be just our second visit to the Festival, and almost 30 years since our first, which was in 1994 with our then Music Director Sir Simon Rattle”, says the orchestra’s chief executive Stephen Maddock. An orchestra with more than a century of tradition, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO), is returning to the festival after nearly thirty years.