Conductor
Europe excluding Scandinavia
Born 1986 in Finland, Ville Matvejeff has established himself as an exceptionally wide-ranging musician enjoying success as conductor, composer and pianist. He trained at the Sibelius Academy and Espoo Music Institute.
Currently, M° Matvejeff is Principal Guest Conductor at Norrlandsoperan Orchestra and from 2014 to 2022he has been Chief Conductor of Jyväskylä Sinfonia, of which he is Music Advisor. In 2014-2020 he was Principal Guest Conductor and Music Advisor of the Croatian National Theatre in Rijeka, where he is actually Honorary Guest Conductor. Since September 2019 Ville Matvejeff is the Artistic Director of the Savonlinna Opera Festival.
Ville Matvejeff is particularly known for his wide range of operatic repertoire as well as bold and adventurous symphonic programming, particularly in mixing the contemporary and 20th century repertoire. He has conducted several times the Duisburg, Tampere and Turku Philharmonic Orchestras as well as appeared with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir, the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, and the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, conducting a wide range of repertoire from Sibelius and Ravel to Hindemith, Aho and Rautavaara. He is particularly known for promoting contemporary composers: with a track record of dozens of world and country premieres, his discography for Ondine, CPO, Naxos and Alba includes recordings of Aulis Sallinen, Éric Tanguy, Olli Virtaperko, Pekka Kostiainen and Boris Papandopulo as well as the operas Gounod’s Faust and Zajc’s Nikola Subic Zrijnski.
About Matvejeff’s opera repertoire, he conducts a diversity of opera ranging from Mozart’s Da Ponte-trilogy (continuo-conducting) to Verdi, Strauss, Puccini, Wagner, and to contemporary productions such as Aribert Reimann’s Lear and Kimmo Hakola’s Akseli. In 2017 he conducted Hänsel und Gretel at Malmö Opera, the world premiere of Aulis Sallinen’s Castle in the Water at the Savonlinna Opera Festival, as well as concert performances of Parsifal at the Turku Music Festival, of which he was Artistic Director in 2016-18.
A musical polymath, Ville Matvejeff is also a pianist and composer. He made his soloist debut as pianist at the age of 18 with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and since 2012 he has toured the world in a recital partnership with soprano Karita Mattila, also in such venues as Wiener Staatsoper, Wigmore Hall in London’s and Opernhaus in Zurich among others. As a composer, he has received commissions from the Finnish Chamber Orchestra and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, for whom he wrote his Violin Concerto to celebrate the inauguration of the Helsinki Music Centre in September 2011. His passion for the human voice has led him to write a substantial amount of choral music, while recordings of his orchestral works Ad Astra and Cello Concerto Crossroads have been released on the Alba label.
LATEST PERFORMANCES: concert with Iceland Symphony Orchestra; Ariadne auf Naxos at Croatian National Theatre Rijeka; opera gala at Mikkeli Music Festival; Nabucco andSaariaho’s Adriana Mater at Savonlinna Opera Festival; Pride and Prejudice by Daniel Nelson at Norrlands Opera; L’elisir d’amore at Jyväskylä Opera; Don Giovanni in Göteborg; Mahler’s Das Liede von der Erde in Espoo with Finnish National Opera Orchestra; Verdi’s Aida and Händel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto in Savonlinna.
FORTHCOMING PROJECTS: La traviata in Shanghai; Kokkonen’s The Last Temptations at Savonlinna Festival.
