A stellar career
Conducting alumnus Martijn Dendievel becomes chief conductor of the Flanders Symphony Orchestra
Martijn Dendievel, a former conducting student at the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar, is to become the new Chief Conductor of the Flanders Symphony Orchestra. From January 2026, the 28-year-old alumnus of the Weimar conducting class of Prof Nicolás Pasquet and Prof Ekhart Wycik will be the first Belgian in 20 years to be appointed to the prestigious post in his home country. Dendievel will also begin his role as the new Chief Conductor of the Hofer Symphoniker as early as the 2024/25 season.
"I am delighted that Martijn Dendievel's career is continuing to take off!" says his former professor Nicolás Pasquet from the "Weimar Conductors' Forge". "The nomination in Flanders, his home region, is now a special honour for him as the most important young conductor in his country," says Pasquet.
Martijn Dendivel is no stranger to the Symfonieorkest Vlaanderen in Ghent, having worked with the Belgian orchestra since 2018, initially as Assistant Conductor and since 2023 as Associate Conductor.
"Martijn Dendievel symbolises what the Flanders Symphony Orchestra wants to stand for: proud of its origins, accessible, ambitious, locally rooted, but with an international reach," says orchestra director Jos Roeden. "It is thanks to the Flanders Symphony Orchestra that I am where I am today as a conductor," says Dendievel himself. "I'm really looking forward to the future with this orchestra."
Martijn Dendievel, born in 1995 in Oostende (Belgium), comes from a family of musicians. He began playing the violin at the age of three, switched to the cello four years later and received formative lessons at the Bruges Conservatory and the Royal Conservatory in Brussels.
He then studied conducting in the class of Prof Nicolás Pasquet and Prof Ekhart Wycik at the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar. During this time, he won the 2021 German Conducting Award, was a prizewinner of the LSO Donatella Flick Conducting Competition and took part in the first Conducting Academy of the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich.
In June 2022, he won a prize at the International Conducting Competition in Rotterdam. Dendievel made his international breakthrough as a guest conductor with the Copenhagen Philharmonic, the Tonkünstler Orchestra Vienna and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, among others.
He is a regular guest conductor of the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale Bologna, the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne and the Sinfonia Varsovia and has conducted orchestras such as the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Brussels Philharmonic, the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, the Belgian National Orchestra and the MDR Symphony Orchestra Leipzig.
[30 April 2024]