Conductor Christian Reif Announces 2024-2025 Season Highlights
Photo Credit: Gälve Symphony Orchestra
New York, NY (July 18, 2024) – Called “an arresting force from the podium” (The Washington Post) and described as “a rare pleasure to watch” (Merker), German conductor Christian Reif has established a reputation for his natural musicality, innovative programming and technical command. In 2024-2025, Reif takes on his second season as Chief Conductor of the Gävle Symphony Orchestra in Sweden, a title he will hold through 2025/2026. He also appears for multiple guest-conducting engagements in the United States and Europe, including debuts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, as well as the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Phoenix Symphony. In September 2024, he takes part in the George Enescu International Competition, conducting the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra for a concert accompanying the final round of the competition’s piano division. Reif’s other guest engagements this season include appearances with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), SWR Symphony Orchestra, Münchner Rundfunkorchester, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra and Royal Northern Sinfonia. He and his wife, soprano Julia Bullock, also bring Bullock’s original program History’s Persistent Voice to performances at Lincoln Center and Yale Schwarzman Center. During the summer preceding his season, Reif serves as Music Director of the Lakes Area Music Festival (LAMF) in Minnesota. In the 16th edition of the annual festival, Heroic Voices, held from July 26 to August 18, 2024, the LAMF Symphony Orchestra performs a range of classical, operatic and children’s programming alongside such soloists as violinist Stefan Jackiw and sopranos Julia Bullock and Nola Richardson. In February 2024, Reif and Bullock's album Walking in the Dark won the GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal.
In a theme running through his programs in Gävle, as well as certain guest engagements, Reif has organized much of this season around a storytelling experience, highlighting works built around fairy tales, stories from history or simply the magic of “storytime,” as experienced by a child. On Friday, January 24 and Saturday, January 25, 2025, Reif conducts the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in the world premiere of Fantastica, a newly commissioned work by Peruvian composer Jimmy López Bellido based on The Neverending Story, originally a fantasy novel by the German writer Michael Ende and later a major motion picture. The work was composed with input from Reif, who had recently become the father of a baby boy and lit on The Neverending Story as a work that tied together his new experience of parenthood with his own memories of reading Ende’s novel as a child. “It’s about the power of fantasy and imagination, and what happens when imagination and hope is being constricted,” Reif says. “It's really philosophical for adults as well, not just a children's story.” The work was co-commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra alongside the Detroit Symphony and the Gävle Symphony Orchestra. In the same program, the orchestra performs Mozart’s Overture to The Magic Flute, Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 7 and Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1, featuring Ilya Finkelshteyn as soloist.
In his Detroit Symphony Orchestra debut from Friday, January 31 to Sunday, February 2, 2025, Reif conducts Bellido’s Fantastica as part of a program also highlighting works by Prokofiev, Florence Price and Anatoly Lyadov, bound together by the storytelling theme, from Lyadov’s fairytale-like Enchanted Lake to Price’s “cinematic” Adoration and Violin Concerto No. 2, featuring soloist Randall Goosby.
“The whole throughline this season is fairy tales and stories,” Reif says. “Music in general can tell a story: We can listen to music and everyone can make up their own movie in their minds. There are pieces that are inspired by actual stories set to music, and pieces that have narratives like an opera. Sometimes the stories are found behind the pieces: more hidden, more tangential – stories from history, stories of ideals and ideas.”
Among his other debuts this season, Reif appears with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday, August 20, 2024 for an all-Dvořák program including the composer’s Carnival Overture, Op. 92 and Symphony No. 7, as well as his Violin Concerto featuring the renowned violin soloist Midori. From Friday, November 22 to Sunday, November 24, Reif makes his Phoenix Symphony debut in Rhapsody In Blue: A 100th Anniversary Celebration – a program celebrating the centennial of the title work by Gershwin alongside three other works that also premiered in 1924: Honegger’s Pacific 231, Sibelius’s Symphony No. 7 and Respighi’s evocative tone poem Pines of Rome. Pianist Conor Hanick is featured on Rhapsody in Blue.
Reif also leads three performances of his own abridged chamber orchestra arrangement of John Adams’ oratorio El Niño, an eclectic retelling of the Nativity story interspersing elements of modern Latin-American culture. On Thursday, December 6, 2024, Reif conducts the program with the Münchner Rundfunkorchester featuring soprano Julia Bullock, mezzo-soprano Rachael Wilson and bass-baritone Davóne Tines. The program will be reprised by the same performers, along with countertenor Anthony Roth Constanzo, with the Gävle Symphony Orchestra on Wednesday, December 12, 2024. The program comes to the United States in a performance by American Modern Opera Company on Wednesday, December 19, 2024 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.
In returns to Yale Schwarzman Center (February 7 and 8, 2025) and Lincoln Center (February 11, 2025), Reif and Bullock lead productions of Bullock’s program History’s Persistent Voice, both produced by ArKType. Combining the songs of enslaved people in the United States with new music by Black American women, the acclaimed program premiered with the San Francisco Symphony in 2022. Musical selections include Jessie Montgomery’s Freedom Songs, based on Slave Songs of the United States: The Classic 1867 Anthology; plus several other commissions based on personal narratives from Black American history: Quilt by Pamela Z, Mama's Little Precious Thing by Allison Loggins-Hull, Green Pastures by Tania León, and two works by Carolyn Yarnell: I Come Up the Hard Way and ain’t my home, both Yale School of Music commissions.
With the Gävle Symphony Orchestra, Reif’s season begins Friday, September 13, 2024 in a program pairing Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 with Concert Overture in D Major by the Swedish composer Elfrida Andrée, a contemporary of Brahms. Completing the program is Mendelssohn’s Reformation Symphony, which ties to the season’s storytelling theme with its narrative depicting the presentation of the Augsburg Confession, a landmark moment in the Protestant Reformation. Pianist Simon Trpčeski is featured on the Brahms concerto. On Friday, October 11, 2024, Reif conducts the orchestra in a program including Farrenc’s Overture No. 2 in E flat major and Melchers’ Piano Concerto No. 2, featuring Peter Jablonski as soloist. The program concludes with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, Eroica, another work reflecting a historical narrative, rooted in the French Revolution. “It’s a narrative of democracy, brotherhood, unity – the emancipation of man,” says Reif.
Reif’s season in Gävle continues on Thursday, October 24, 2024 with a program featuring music from Norwegian composer Johan Halvorsen’s “Norwegian Fairy Tale Pictures,” a children's comedy known for its fanciful depictions of trolls and other mythical creatures from Nordic lore. The program also features performances of Hindemith's Mathis der Mahler and Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major, with piano soloist Alice Sara Ott.
In a highlight of the season’s storytelling theme, Reif conducts the Gävle Symphony Orchestra in Story Time on Friday, February 21, 2025. The program begins with the European premiere of Lopez' Fantastica and continues with Vaclav Trojan’s Fairytale Concerto featuring Ksenija Sidorova on accordion. The program concludes with Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa Rhapsody (Arr: Max Schönherr, 1940) from the composer’s operatic tragedy Jenůfa.
From Monday, March 24 to Sunday, March 30, 2025, the Gävle Symphony Orchestra presents a series of Family Concerts.
On Friday, April 11, 2025, the Gävle season continues with a theater-inspired program highlighting Swedish composer Daniel Nelson’s Chaplin Songs, based on text from the 1940 satirical film The Great Dictator, starring Charlie Chaplin. The program also includes Kurt Weill’s Symphony No. 2 “Symphonic fantasy” and the overture from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide. Soprano Camilla Tilling is featured alongside the Holy Trinity Vocal Ensemble and the Järvso Kyrka Vocal Ensemble.
In the Gävle Symphony Orchestra’s season finale on Thursday, May 22, 2025, Reif conducts the orchestra in Songs Around Midnight, bringing together works by Valerie Coleman, Albert Schnelzer and Carl Reinecke. Coleman’s Tracing Visions finds its theme in stories of racial struggle and triumph, incorporating a tribute to the Sphinx Organization, a leading force for social justice in classical music. Completing the program are Reinecke’s Symphony No.3 and Schnelzer’s Nocturnal Songs, a meditation on the state between wakefulness and sleep.
In European guest engagements this season, Reif conducts the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra in their program Enchantment on November 8, 2024. Lyadov’s The Enchanted Lake features in this program, alongside Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 7. Alexander Melnikov performs as piano soloist.
On March 21, 2025, Reif leads the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland in a program highlighting Strauss’s Metamorphosen, the composer’s lyrical lament for the war-time bombing of Dresden. The orchestra also performs Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, Pastoral and Schumann’s Cello Concerto, with Anastasia Kobekina as soloist.
On Thursday, April 3 and Friday, April 4, 2025, Reif conducts Germany’s SWR Symphonieorchester in a program of “Radio Music,” first in Freiburg and subsequently in Stuttgart. Featuring works by Pavel Haas, Hanns Eisler, Walter Braunfels and Ernst Toch, this program represents a callback to the early days of radio in 1920s Germany, when composers were exploring the distinction between “serious” music versus music for entertainment. In keeping with the season’s theme, some composers took a storytelling approach – as in Haas’s Radio Overture, which takes the form of a short play. This concert will be recorded for deferred broadcast on SWRKultur radio.
In his season’s final guest engagement on Friday, April 25, 2025 at 7:30pm, Reif appears with Royal Northern Sinfonia in Gateshead, UK, conducting Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 featuring soloist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, along with Poulenc’s Sinfonietta and Brahms’ Symphony No. 3.