François-Xavier Roth
(c) François Sechet
The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) has announced that François-Xavier Roth will become its Principal Guest Conductor from September 2017. He will replace Daniel Harding, who is stepping down after ten years in the role. Roth, 45, is currently General Music Director of the City of Cologne.
In a press release the LSO says: « François-Xavier Roth has developed a very special relationship with the LSO ever since he first conducted the Orchestra in 2000, when he won the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition and, as a result became the LSO’s Assistant Conductor. He has worked with the LSO at every Barbican season since then and has been closely involved in the Orchestra’s Panufnik Composers Scheme, a leading programme for young and emerging composers, which has placed him at the heart of the LSO’s development of new music since the Scheme launched in 2006.
He has worked extensively with the music education and community programme LSO Discovery and in 2012 he conducted an orchestra of young people from East London, playing alongside members of the LSO, in Elgar’s Nimrod, performed as part of the London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony. »
