Winner, Grand Prix, International Conducting Competition Rotterdam 2022
Music Director, Waterperry Opera Festival
Bertie Baigent came to international attention as the winner of the Grand Prix, Classical Prize, and Symphonic Prize at the International Conducting Competition Rotterdam 2022, following his ‘imposing’ and ‘spectacular’ performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 and the world premiere of Joey Roukens’s Night Flight with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra.
|
Other recent highlights have included concerts with Orchestre National de Lille at BOZAR in Brussels, a tour with Phion Orkest culminating with Bertie’s debut in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, St Louis Symphony Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic, and Teatro Regio Torino. Bertie was due to conduct the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo in 2022 before Covid-19 forced him to withdraw.
|
Since then he has established a strong presence on the international stage with a busy series of debuts and return engagements, including in the last season the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, CBSO, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Orchestre philharmonique du Luxembourg, Tampere Philharmonic, and Bruckner Orchester Linz. In the coming season he looks forwards to further debuts with the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon, Maggio Musicale in Florence, and the Osaka Philharmonic, working with soloists such as Imogen Cooper and Cédric Tiberghien.
“Bertie Baigent is a force to be reckoned with” (Opera Magazine) |
Also active on the operatic stage, Bertie co-founded and has been Music Director of Waterperry Opera Festival since 2017. There he has conducted acclaimed productions of all the Mozart/da Ponte operas, Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, Bizet’s Carmen, and Britten’s The Turn of the Screw. Further opera productions include Handel’s Partenope and Semele, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and his own Paradise Lost, performed to sell-out audiences in London in 2022. In 2025 he will return to Glyndebourne for a third consecutive season, this time to assist Robin Ticciati on the festival’s first ever production of Parsifal.
“The RSNO...ably cued and shaped by nimble, insightful conductor Bertie Baigent” ***** (The I)
Bertie also works regularly in the world of historically informed performance – recently conducting the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century in performances and radio broadcasts of Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto – and also directing from the harpsichord for Waterperry’s annual Messiah performances and Bach’s St John Passion.
Bertie was born in Oxford and studied the cello and piano before moving towards conducting and composition. He read music at the University of Cambridge and subsequently studied conducting at the Royal Academy of Music with Sian Edwards. As an assistant conductor Bertie worked closely with artists such as Lahav Shani, Sir Mark Elder, and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla on major international tours; he also served as cover conductor for the Dallas and St Louis Symphony Orchestras.
“Baigent guided the orchestra carefully through this complex and lush sonority, gradually building up the momentum to a magnificent finale” (Bachtrack)