Ewa Strusińska

INTRODUCTION

Ewa Strusińska is the General Music Director of the Gerhart Hauptmann Theater Görlitz-Zittau and Principal Conductor of the Neue Lausitzer Philharmonie since 2018/2019. Straight away in her first season, she brought new standards and fresh ideas with her concert programs to this European corner of Germany. She attracted considerable attention outside the region with broadcasts and portraits on radio, TV, and the press.

RECENT AND FUTURE ENGAGEMENTS

After having conducted new productions of Meyerbeer‘s Dinorah, Puccini’s Tosca, Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, Rossini’s Barber of Sevilla and Mozart’s Don Giovanni during the last seasons in Görlitz, in 2022/2023 she conducted a new production of Mozart’s Zauberflöte and Friedrich von Flotow’s Rübezahl as well as the revival of the children’s opera Schneewittchen by Marius Felix Lange. Her concert repertoire in recent seasons extends from Beethoven, and Schumann to Schönberg, Brett Dean, and Tan Dun with Wagner, Mahler, and Richard Strauss in between. The 2022/2023 season also saw several debuts: she made her debut with the Royal Swedish Ballet in Stockholm in December (Prokofiev’s ballet Cinderella) and with the Malmö Symphony Orchestra in February 2023, at the Theater Chemnitz in January 2023. She made a debut at the Konzerthaus Dortmund in April and in Spain with the Orquesta Filarmónica de Málaga in June 2023. She conducted an outdoor gala concert with the Arctic Philharmonic as well.

As a guest conductor, Ewa Strusińska gave her debut at the Danish Royal Opera in Copenhagen in August 2021. In Poland, she has worked during the last years with orchestras like the National Symphony Orchestra of the Polish Radio Katowice, the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, and orchestras in Opole, Łódź, Olsztyn, Rzeszów, Gdansk, and Bydgoszcz.

Re-invitations took her to the Jönköpings Sinfonietta (Verdi’s Requiem and concerts) and the Orchestra of the Beethoven Academy in Krakow, among others. Further guest engagements included concerts with the Staatskapelle Halle, the Südwestdeutsche Philharmonie Konstanz, the Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt/Oder, the Jena Philharmonic, the Slovak Sinfonietta, the Johannesburg Philharmonic, and the Northern Sinfonia.

In the 2023/2024 season, Ewa Strusińska conducted a New Year’s concert at the Royal Swedish Opera. She led the Uppsala Chamber Orchestra in the ‘Löf plays Haydn’ concert with the program also featuring works by Bacewicz, Górecki, and Mozart. In February 2024 she conducted Jönköping Sinfonietta in the concert ‘Symphonic Shakespeare w. Johan Dalene’ – the program featured contemporary works by Tebogo Monnakgotla and Jonas Valfridsson, as well as classics by Tchaikovsky (Hamlet) and Prokofiev (Romeo and Juliet). Her premieres in Görlitz included Bernstein’s Peter Pan in January 2024 and Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman in March 2024. Ewa Strusińska will also conduct a National Day Concert with the Norwegian Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra in May 2024.

Her further future engagements include a re-invite to conduct Prokofiev’s Cenerentola with the Royal Swedish Ballet, a re-invitation to the Polish National Opera to conduct Moniuszko’s The Haunted Manor, as well as re-invitations to lead the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orquesta Filarmónica de Málaga and the Zielona Góra Philharmonic Orchestra. She will make her debut with the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie – Koblenz, and the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Landestheater Coburg.

BIOGRAPHY

A very important aspect of Ewa Strusińska’s activity is in the lyric field. She gathered wide experience with the repertoire at the Buxton Opera Festival in Great Britain, at the Royal Northern College of Music,  at the Royal Ballet Covent Garden, and then as an assistant in Warsaw’s National Opera and Ballet from 2011 – 2013. Here she worked on not only well-known Italian and German repertoire but also on rarities like Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol, Dusapin’s Medeamaterial, and Stanislaw Moniuszko’s The Haunted Manor, directed by David Pountney. After her debut at the Magdeburg Opera in January 2016 with Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty, she was reinvited in March 2017 for a new production of the Csárdásfürstin.

Ewa Strusińska has a particular commitment to getting music across to young people and preparing musicians of the future. She teaches at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, conducts different orchestras and choirs in England, and regularly works with the Landesjugendorchester Berlin and the South African National Youth Orchestra. She initiated several cross-border projects with young people in Germany – Poland – the Czech Republic like the Lausitz Orchestra Academy “Young Philharmonic”. She is also more and more in demand for international competitions: in June 2019 she conducted the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at the BBC Cardiff Singers of the World Competition and in September 2019, she presided over the jury at the prestigious Aeolus Wind Competition at the Tonhalle Düsseldorf.

From 2013 to 2016, Ewa Strusińska held the position of Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Szczecin Philharmonic Orchestra where she left a lasting mark on the music life of the city and led the orchestra to a previously unknown brilliance in the new Philharmonic Hall. After her diploma at the Fryderyk Chopin Music Academy in Warsaw,  Ewa Strusińska became known abroad as a laureate of the Bamberg Symphony’s Conducting Competition Gustav Mahler in 2007.  From 2008 – 2010 she worked as the assistant conductor of Sir Mark Elder with the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester and participated in numerous master classes led by Antoni Wit, Gabriel Chmura, Bruno Weil, and Kurt Masur.

After her recording of works by Moniuszko, Chopin and Lutosławski with the orchestra of the Beethoven Academy and pianist Martin Labazevitch in 2015, her recording of the Symphony No. 4 by Grażyna Bacewicz with the Sinfonia Varsovia was released in 2018.