Stéphane Denève

Conductor Stéphane Denève has been influential in the fields of orchestral music and opera and has led ensembles in France, the U.S., and Germany. He is music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Denève was born in Tourcoing on the French-Belgian border on November 24, 1971. He attended the Paris Conservatoire (CNSMDP) and rounded out his conducting education with assistantships under Georg Solti, Georges Prêtre, and Seiji Ozawa. Denève's first major appearance was in the U.S., conducting Poulenc's opera Dialogues des Carmelites at the Santa Fe Opera in 1999, and he has continued to maintain strong connections in that country, among them marrying Åsa Nilsson in California in 2007. In 2004, Denève made his recording debut with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège in Belgium, with pianist Frank Braley on an album of piano-and-orchestra works by Poulenc. Denève landed his first music directorship at the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in 2005, broadening its reach with a 2006 appearance at the Proms in London and a subsequent concert in France, the orchestra's first. In 2007, he led that group on the Naxos label in a recording of Albert Roussel's ballet Bacchus et Ariane. He remained with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra until 2012, a year after he took the podium at the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra. He gained that post after conducting the orchestra as a last-minute substitute in 2009; he remained the chief conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony until 2016. An appointment as music director of the Brussels Philharmonic, beginning in 2015, also began with a guest-conducting slot, and after several guest appearances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, he was made that orchestra's principal guest conductor as well, beginning in 2014. In 2019, Denève began a three-year term as the music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra; his contract was extended through 2026.  He has also continued to conduct opera, appearing at such major venues as the Opéra National de Paris, the Glyndebourne Festival, and the Royal Opera House in London. He became artistic director of the New World Symphony in 2022. Denève has made recordings for various labels, with several of the orchestras he has conducted, recording French material that is not commonly heard outside France. Denève has made albums for Chandos, Hänssler Classic, and SWR Music, the latter during his tenure with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony. In 2020, he and the Brussels Philharmonic backed cellist Camille Thomas on her album Voice of Hope. Denève released his first recording with the St. Louis Symphony in 2024 on the PentaTone Classics label, leading the group in performances featuring violinist James Ehnes of John Williams' Violin Concerto No. 1 and Leonard Bernstein's Serenade. ~ James Manheim, Rovi