Spain, Portugal & Latin America
Jonathan Nott was a solo singer as a boy treble (Louis Frémaux and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra), sang as a tenor at Cambridge University and studied opera singing at the Royal Northern College of Music. As Repetiteur at the London Opera Studio, he studied conducting with the English opera conductor David Parry, played the organ in Tosca, conducted the off-stage choir in Parsifal at Covent Garden (Bernard Haitink) and conducted the off-stage orchestra in Opera Rara’s recording of Donizetti L’Assedio di Calais. As a tenor, he sang with St Paul’s and Westminster Cathedral choirs.
His first appointment was as Repetiteur at the Frankfurt Opera under Garry Bertini, who also gave him his first conducting opportunity: La Finta Giardiniera and Heinz Holliger’s Beckett Trilogy, the success of which led to performances of The Nose and Mahagonny.
As First Kapellmeister of the Wiesbaden Opera, he conducted all genres from Cimarosa, through Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, Gounod, Puccini, Shostakovich, Kurt Weill, Maxwell Davis, Henze, a new ballet production of Prokofiev Romeo & Juliet, to Sondheim and The Little Shop of Horrors, and he conducted Wagner’s Ring (Siegfried Jerusalem) and Elektra (Eva Marton) at the Maifestspiele.
Whilst in Frankfurt he developed an interest in conducting contemporary music: Ligeti (first Hungarian production of Le Grand Macabre, Budapest Opera), Boulez (Ballet Béjart), Stockhausen, Lachenmann, Hosokawa, Eötvös, Gubaidulina, as well as many composers of the younger generation.
Jonathan Nott has held positions as Musical Director of the Lucerne Opera, Chief Conductor of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and Musical Director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain. He debuted with the SWR at the Baden Baden Festival with Elektra (Ruth Berghaus, Hildegard Behrens), and as Musical Director of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande initiated new productions of Rossini Barbieri, Debussy Pelléas, Parsifal, and Rosenkavalier at the Grand Theatre de Genève. He gave concert performances of Tristan at the Edinburgh Festival and Falstaff and the Ring at the Lucerne Festival with the Bamberg Symphony (Chief Conductor from 2000-2016) and has just completed a new production of the Ring at the Theater Basel.
During his 12 years as Chief Conductor of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, he and Sir Thomas Allen directed a series of opera concert performances: the Mozart da Ponte trilogy, Salome (Asmik Grigorian), Elektra (Christine Goerke); “Best Concert in Japan 2023-24“ by "Ongaku no Tomo" magazine), Rosenkavalier and Schönberg’s Gurrelieder.
His recent projects include the Adel Abdessemed production of Messiaen Saint-François d’Assise in Geneva, Mahler 7 with the New Japan Philharmonic, two concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra performing works by Mazzoli, Eötvös and Ives and a tour of Germany with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie (Principal Conductor from 2014-2024).
After the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande New Year Opera Gala (Juliana Grigoryan), he started 2025 conducting the SWR (Zemlinsky) followed by the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln (Boulez), Dresdner Philharmonie (Pelléas and Le Sacre du Printemps), a complete “Die Fledermaus” at the Tokyo Spring Festival, the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich (Messiaen and Mahler) and is currently with the OSR on a tour of Asia.
Jonathan Nott is a Reiki-master: “I’ve come to realise over the years that truly great conducting is simply the formation and re-formation of inexorable human energy constantly in flow created by the players/singers and transmitted to and reflected by the listener using that most fundamental and wondrous form of non-verbal communication we call “music”. Music heals, that is its and our one-and-only purpose.”
Jonathan Nott has an extensive catalogue of recordings, including the complete orchestral works of Ligeti with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Jonas Kaufmann. His recordings with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra include works by Janacek, Bruckner, Wagner (Klaus Florian Vogt), as well as the complete symphonic works by Schubert and Mahler, the latter of which received the Internationaler Schallplattenpreis Toblacher Komponierhäuschen 2009 (Mahler 9), MIDEM best classical recording 2010 (Mahler 9), Classica France Feb 2022 blind listening best Mahler 5 on record.
His first recording with the OSR featured works by Richard Strauss, Debussy and Ligeti (2018 Pentatone), followed by a recording on the theme of Pelléas et Mélisande with works by Debussy and Schönberg which received a "Choc" from Classica and the “Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik” (the German Record Critics Prize). A third CD (2022) featured pianist Francesco Piemontesi with works by Ravel, Schönberg and Messiaen.
The Covid years gave rise to innovation with the OSR: a streamed broadcast of Beethoven 9 “in-the-round”, a series of live, daily, on-line rehearsals: how conducting “works”, followed by an introduction to Mahler 9 alongside a performance of the full symphony, produced by Actua films, all from the Victoria Hall, Geneva. In 2025 the first studio recording of all four orchestral works by Dieter Ammann (Schweizer Fonogramm), as well as a live performance of the Eroica symphony and William Tell overture will appear on the OSR’s “Virtual Hall” platform. In 2025 the first studio recording of all four orchestral works by Dieter Ammann (Schweizer Fonogramm), as well as a live performance of the Eroica symphony and William Tell overture will appear on the OSR’s “Virtual Hall” platform.
His discography of recordings with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, which include Mahler, Bruckner (1, 2, 5, 7 and 9), and Tchaikovsky (2, 3, 5 and 6) will be augmented by the release of both Beethoven (2 and 5) and Brahms (2) (EXTON/OCTAVIA) this month.
