The Can't Miss Kid

By all critical accounts, conductor Lionel Bringuier took New York by storm with his debut this week in Avery Fisher Hall. In a Mozart and Beethoven programme for the famed Mostly Mozart Festival, he collaborated for the first time with Garrick Ohlsson and his first time in the Big Apple.

The New York Times on 07 August 2008 called his account of Beethoven's fourth symphony "energetic" and noted "through self-restraint, Mr. Bringuier conveyed the “what’s going on here?” suspense of the Adagio introduction, before segueing deftly into the bumptious Allegro ." Read the complete review here.

The New York Sun's Jay Nordlinger had already seen Lionel in action on the pult last year in Switzerland and was thus not discovering a new talent, but a more seasoned conductor, calling him "the Can't Miss Kid...he has already arrived" in his review o 07 August 2008.

On his Mozart, the Sun commented that "he was musical all the way — you could even say pure." Considering his Beethoven, Mr. Nordlinger was more effusive, writing:

Mr. Bringuier is a natural communicator — both to an orchestra and to an audience. His gestures are elegant and fairly big. They are not economical, and they are not excessive. Mr. Bringuier does what it takes, in his own, tasteful, expressive way. On every page of Beethoven's Fourth, a musical intelligence was present. Mr. Bringuier is a respecter of the old musical values concerning rhythm, phrasing, dynamics, etc. He is attentive to detail, but conscious of the overall picture. There is no ego in his conducting, and may there never be. (Will people tell him to be more "individual"?) Beethoven was in very good hands. His second movement, Adagio, was loving but not smothered or smothering. The ensuing minuet was merry but somehow aristocratic — elegant. And its tempos, like the other movements' tempos, were perfect: Fasts were not too fast; slows were not too slow. And the closing Allegro was simply covered with pleasure. When it was all over, the crowd cheered like crazy for Mr. Bringuier.

Read the complete Sun review here.

Bringuier will return to New York for concerts with the New York Philharmonic at the end of the 2008/09 season.

Congratulations, Lionel!

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Contact: Mark Newbanks or Victoria Just