Modestas Pitrėnas
Modestas Pitrenas
Modestas Pitrenas is a Lithuanian conductor who has quickly established himself internationally as a conductor equally at ease on the concert platform as in the opera house. He was appointed in 2015 as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra in Vilnius.
Besides that, starting in the season 2018/2019 he took on the position of Chief Conductor of the Symphony Orchestra and Theatre St Gallen.
Modestas Pitrenas studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in Vilnius. He took part in masterclasses with conductors such as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Jorma Panula and Helmuth Rilling. In 2003 he won first prize in the 7th Grzegorz Fitelberg Conducting Competition in Katowice (Poland), as well as the special prize awarded by the Silesian Philharmonie, which led to a number of engagements with the leading symphony orchestras of Poland.
Having held the positions of Chief Conductor of the Symphony Orchestra in Kaunas, Lithuania (2006–2011) and General Music Director of the Latvian National Opera in Riga (2008–2014).
His considerable operatic repertoire includes Wagner`s Rienzi, Die Walküre and Der fliegende Holländer, Puccini’s Le Willi, Madamma Buterfly, Tosca, La Rondine and Turandot, il Trittico, Straussʼ Salome, Bizet`s Carmen, Verdi’s Nabucco, Aida and Don Carlo, Massenet`s Werther and Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame, Mazeppa and Eugen Onegin as well as Love and other Demons by Péter Eötvös and Prokofiev’s The Gambler. Modestas Pitrenas made his debut with Mozart`s Zauberflöte at Cologne Opera, and has been guest conductor at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, the National Opera in Warsaw, the Aalto Theater Essen, Opera Stuttgart and the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki. He has directed symphony concerts with orchestras across the whole of Europe, in Japan, India and China.
In 2010 he was awarded the Latvian Music Prize, and in 2012 honoured with the Lithuanian National Arts and Culture Prize as well as with a Prize of Baltic Assembly. Since 2003 he has been teaching conducting at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in Vilnius.
