Following a highly successful tour together of Switzerland a couple of years ago, Matthias Bamert and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra are back in partnership, having toured the UK this Autumn and played a special concert together to mark the opening of the Auditorio de Galicia in Santiago de Compostela in January. A visit to the Lucerne Festival is planned for 2001. Bamert’s recent performances of Bruckner’s Symphony No.9 with the City of Birmingham Symphony in December was by all accounts “sublime…passionately truthful” (The Times). “Bamert’s talents, happily free of a lubricious publicity machine, are legion…” (The Independent). This Spring Bamert has a large number of international engagements including visits to North America (Houston, Montreal, Indianapolis, Ottawa, with Cleveland and Pittsburgh later in the year) and Japan (9-concert tour with the London Mozart Players and subscription concerts with the NHK Symphony). Squeezing in a few European engagements (Liceu Opera, Barcelona, Strasbourg Philharmonic and the Residentie Orchestra in the Hague with whom he records for Chandos), he then departs for the New Zealand Symphony who have just appointed him Principal Guest Conductor for three years from 2000/2001.