Renowned French conductor Ariane Matiakh was born into a musical family. She is the daughter of two opera singers and learned to play the piano at an early age. Later, she studied orchestral conducting in Vienna, Austria, where she also sang in the world-famous Arnold Schoenberg Choir under conductors including Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Adam Fischer. Particularly formative experiences during her comprehensive training include the time she spent studying with Leopold Hager and Seiji Ozawa. Matiakh has conducted extensively throughout Europe. Her first appointment conducting in an opera house was at the Opéra et Orchestre de Montpellier. Subsequent engagements brought her to the Komische Oper Berlin, the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm, and to Amsterdam, Gothenburg, Graz, Nice, Strasbourg, and Halle. In 2009, she was nominated “Discovery of the Year” by the most important music prize in France, the “Révélation des Victoires de la musique”. Today, Ariane Matiakh’s repertoire covers opera and ballet, a wide variety of symphonic works, contemporary compositions, and baroque music. She often appears as guest conductor with leading ensembles such as the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonic, and many others. In the 2019/20 season, she made her debut with the Wiener Symphoniker in Vienna and the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra. She also made guest appearances conducting La Bohème at the Royal Opera House in London and Carmen at the Norwegian National Opera in Oslo, as well as returning to the opera house in Strasbourg, and to Stockholm for performances with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Matiakh’s versatility and the joy she experiences when making musical discoveries is also reflected in her discography. She has recorded the works of Johanna Doderer, as well as a CD with music by Francis Poulenc and Jean Françaix. In 2018, she received a Grammy nomination for her recording of piano concertos by Zara Levina with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. In another collaboration with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, she recorded works by Harald Genzmer, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, and Richard Strauss. She also released a recording with piano concertos by Clara Schumann and Ludwig van Beethoven, performed by Ragna Schirmer and the Staatskapelle Halle. In addition to conducting and recording, Matiakh has been a professor at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris since September 2018, and was appointed General Music Director at the Opera and Staatskapelle Halle in Germany. In recognition of her achievements in French musical life and representing French culture abroad, Ariane Matiakh was awarded the “Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” by the French ministry of culture in 2014.

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