Gijs Leenaars

A major choral and orchestral conductor, Gijs Leenaars is active both within his native Netherlands and beyond. He is the chief conductor of the Rundfunkchor Berlin. Leenaars was born in Nijmegen in the Netherlands in 1978. He studied both orchestral and choral conducting there and at the Amsterdam Conservatory; he is also a trained pianist and singer. In 2012, he became chief conductor of the Netherlands Radio Choir ("Groot Omroepkoor") in Hilversum. He has conducted various Dutch groups, including the Alphons Diepenbrock Nijmegen Student Choir, the Bachkoor Holland, and the Capella Frisiae. Leenaars was also active as an orchestral conductor, making guest appearances with the Residentie Orkest, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Pulcinella Chamber Orchestra, among other groups. His guest choral conducting appearances include those with the Cappella Amsterdam, the Nederlands Kamerkoor, and, although he is mostly identified with mainstream and contemporary repertory, the historical performance-oriented Collegium Vocale Gent. In 2015, Leenaars became the chief conductor and artistic director of the Rundfunkchor Berlin. There, he has led the group in distinctive concerts and performed on tours as far afield as South America, where they performed Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, and the requiem settings of Mozart and Brahms. Leenaars conducted the choir a cappella at the White Light Festival in New York's Lincoln Center, and in Germany, he conducted the choir and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in a cathedral performance of Arthur Honegger's Le roi David. He has often programmed contemporary music, rehearsing the Netherlands Radio Choir in the complete choral works of György Kurtág for a recording under conductor Reinbert de Leeuw and conducting the Dutch premiere of Wolfgang Rihm's Vigilia. The Rundfunkchor Berlin rejoined the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin for the 2019 recording Brahms on the Sony Classical label; that marked Leenaars' recording debut as a primary artist, although he had already prepared choirs for recordings of choral-orchestral works by other conductors. In 2020, the Rundfunkchor Berlin-Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin pairing returned on the PentaTone label for a recording of masses by Bruckner and Stravinsky, and in 2022, once again on Sony Classical, for a recording of Verdi's Quatro pezzi sacri.
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