Regularly invited to conduct major orchestras, Jun Märkl is one of the most notable conductors of his generation. Born in Munich, he studied piano, violin and conducting in Hanover, before continuing his studies with Sergiu Celibidache and Gustav Meier at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Winner in 1986 of the German Musical Council’s conducting competition, the following year he received a scholarship from the Boston Symphony Orchestra to work with Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa at the Tanglewood Academy. With appointments in Lucerne, Bern and Darmstadt, then as musical director of the Saarländisches Staatstheater in Saarbrücken, from 1991 to 1994, Jun Märkl became musical and artistic director of the Staatstheater in Mannheim, a post he retained until the end of the 1999-2000 season.
From the time of his first success in December 1993 in Tosca, Jun Märkl has become one of the favourite conductors of the Vienna Staatsoper where, in particular, he conducted Turandot, Parsifal, Rheingold, Walküre, Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos and Cardillac (Hindemith). In 1996 he made his début at Covent Garden in Götterdämmerung. Two years later he conducted Il Trovatore at the New York Metropolitan Opera, where he was invited back the following season to conduct La Traviata. He was Permanent Conductor of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich until 2006, where he conducted among other works, Peter Grimes, Walküre, Tannhäuser, Queen of Spades, and a rarely performed opera by Dvořák, Dimitrij. He also keeps close contact with the Staatsoper and the Deutsche Oper in Berlin.
In addition, Jun Märkl, has a busy career as a symphonic conductor. He has conducted the Orchestre de Paris, the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bavarian State Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the Cologne Radio Orchestra (WDR), the NDR Symphony Orchestra (Hamburg), the Danish Radio National Symphony Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic and the Tokyo NHK Orchestra. In North America, he has conducted the Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas, Montreal and Toronto symphony orchestras, as well as the Minnesota Orchestra.
In September 2005 he took up his job as musical director of the Lyon National Orchestra, and in 2007/8 Jun Märkl became Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of the MDR Sinfonieorchester (Leipzig Radio Symphony), as a complement to his activities in Lyon.
He has made recordings with the Deutsches Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin (Capriccio), with the violinist Sarah Chang and the English Chamber Orchestra (EMI Classics) and with the Tokyo NHK Orchestra (Altus). Jun Märkl devotes himself mainly to a repertoire that includes Mozart, Wagner, Puccini and French composers of the beginning of the 20th Century, but he is also an advocate of new music and has encouraged the creation of operas and symphonic scores composed by the greatest musical names of our times.
For more information, please visit www.intermusica.co.uk/markl
With kind permission of Sandy Burnett and Intermusica.
