Anyone who's attended an Aurora Orchestra concert at Kings Place will know that twentysomething conductor Nicholas Collon - oddly, the birth date seems elusive - is a force to be reckoned with. When he speaks, he looks as if butter wouldn't melt, but in action his technique is disciplined as well as sufficiently free to get the flexibility he needs. So the London Philharmonic Orchestra has made an excellent choice in appointing him as assistant conductor to Vladimir Jurowski from the beginning of the 2011-12 season.
Collon says of Jurowski that he's "already been a huge support to me", and adds that he looks forward to "working with the London Philharmonic on such a wide range of wonderful repertoire". His canny programming scope with his equally youthful Aurora players has already won him his laurels: earlier this season he stepped into an indisposed Sir Colin Davis's shoes for an all-Mozart concert with aplomb; and whatever I may have thought of the new Nico Muhly concerto he helped to commission and premiere a couple of weeks back, I couldn't praise too highly his tough, brilliant work on the fiendishly difficult John Adams Chamber Symphony. Less than a decade ago we were asking where the young British conductors were going to come from after Rattle and Daniel Harding: now there are Ed Gardner, Aurora Orchestra co-founder Robin Ticciati, Leo Hussain (who's currently matching the radical look of the ENO Britten A Midsummer Night's Dream)... and Collon. It's getting better all the time.
- More about Nicholas Collon on his website
- Visit the LPO's website for details of its 2011-12 season
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