Paul McCreesh

Paul McCreesh has guest conducted many of the major orchestras and choirs across the globe, including most recently the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Bergen Philharmonic, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, Verbier Festival orchestras, and Berlin Konzerthausorchester. McCreesh also enjoys regular and ongoing collaborations with Saint Paul and Basel Chamber Orchestras.

In 2019/20, he conducted Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 2 and excerpts from Schubert’s Rosamunde with the New Japan Philharmonic, Haydn’s Creation with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Handel’s Messiah with the Casa da Música Baroque Orchestra & Choir, Haydn’s London Symphony & Beethoven’s C Major Mass with Filharmonia Poznanska, with whom he conducts again this season.

In the previous season, he conducted works by Elgar, Haydn and Brahms with the Kammerakademie Potsdam, a programme of Elgar, Britten and Mendelssohn with the Bamberger Symphoniker, he returned to the Filharmonia Poznanska for some Rossini and Britten, and conducted performances with the MDR Sinfonieorchester at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and the Basel Chamber Orchestra.

From 2013-2016 he was Principal Conductor and Artistic Adviser of the Gulbenkian Orchestra (Lisbon) with whom he conducted a wide range of music from the classical period through to the nineteenth and twentieth century, focusing in particular on symphonic repertoire, oratorio and opera in concert, working closely with the world-renowned Gulbenkian Choir.

McCreesh has established a strong reputation in the opera house and has conducted productions at the Teatro Real Madrid, Royal Danish Opera, Opera Comique, Vlaamse Opera and at the Verbier Festival, and most recently he conducted Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Bergen Opera, and returned to Vlaamse Opera for a production of Idomeneo.

In 2011, McCreesh launched his own record label, Winged Lion, in collaboration with the Gabrieli Consort & Players, Signum Classics and the Wratislavia Cantans Festival, where he was Artistic Director between 2006 and 2012. To date they have made seven recordings, most recently Haydn The Seasons, released in spring 2017 and lauded by critics: “the communal sense of joy is infectious” (Financial Times) and “Glorious” (Guardian).