Conductor, composer, pianist and author, FRÉDÉRIC CHASLIN was born in Paris and educated at the Paris Conservatoire and the Salzburg Mozarteum. He became assistant of Daniel Barenboim from 1987 to 1989 at the Orchestre de Paris and Bayreuth Festival, in 1989 he became Pierre Boulez’s assistant at the Ensemble Intercontemporain until 1991. He became successively Music Director of the Opera in Rouen (1991-94), the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra (1998-2001), the Mannheim Nationaltheater (2004-2007), the Santa Fe Opera (2009-2013) and for his second tenure, the Jerusalem Symphony (2011-2019). Frédéric Chaslin divides his conducting activities equally between operatic and symphonic performances.
At the opera, he conducted New York Metropolitan (since 2002), Los Angeles Opera, Berlin Deutsche Oper, Munich Bayerische Staatsoper, as well as Leipzig, Dresden, Madrid, Bologna, Roma, Venice, Torino, Tokyo, Oslo, Copenhagen. Frédéric Chaslin made his Austrian debuts in 1993 at the Bregenzer Festspiele for Nabucco (93, 94) and Fidelio (95, 96). Since 1997, he is a regular guest conductor at the Vienna State Opera where he conducted nearly 250 performances of 34 different tittles, as well as concert with the Vienna Philharmonic as a conductor and as a pianist (September 2001, Beethoven 5th piano concerto. Paril 2018, Mahler’s 5th Symphony). Major recent appearances were two new productions of Tales of Hoffman in Dresden and in Teatro alla Scala in Milan.
In the symphonic repertoire, he’s conducted all major French orchestras (Orchestre de Paris, Orchestra National, Radio-France Philharmonic, Paris Opera Orchestra), the Filarmonica della Scala, Torino Rai, Manchester Hallé, London Philharmonia, London Symphony, Vienna Symphony, Vienna Philharmonic, Spain National Orchestra, Gulbenkian Foundation Orchestra (Lisbon), Israel Philharmonic, Nagoya Philharmonic. He performed several piano concertos as a conductor/pianist (Ravel 2 piano concertos, Beethoven 5 piano concertos with the Vienna Philharmonic, Mozart K488 with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra).
As a composer, Frédéric Chaslin is published by Universal Edition, Vienna, with over 250 works including 5 operas, over 72 melodies in several cycles for voices, chamber music, symphonic music, piano music.
As an author, Frédéric Chaslin wrote an essay, Music in Every Sense, published in Paris (France-Empire) and Germany (Böhlau) and available in English on Kindle. and in October 2017 he released a novel based on the life of Gustav Mahler, Being Gustav Mahler, (Fayard, Paris) together with his own orchestration of Mahler’s 10th symphony that has been premiered on Nov 30th, 2018, with the Zagreb Philharmonic.
Photo: Bernard Martinez