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Märkl’s 08/9 Lyon season culminated in a Summer tour of Luzern, Bad Kissingen, Rheingau, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Salle Pleyel and the BBC Proms (Märkl’s London symphonic debut). In October 09 he tours Spain with the MDR, and touring plans with both orchestras stretch well into the future.
Märkl has long been a regular guest with leading German orchestras, and in 2008 returned to the Munich Philharmonic and the Radio Sinfonie Orchester Berlin. Before assuming the musical directorship in Lyon, he was a regular guest with the Orchestre de Paris and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. He has also conducted orchestras in Scandinavia (Helsinki Philharmonic, Danish Radio), the UK (English Chamber Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony, Royal Scottish National), and the Netherlands (Rotterdam and Netherlands Philharmonic and the Dutch Radio Philharmonic). Future guesting plans include returns to many of these orchestras, and debuts with the Czech Philharmonic, Oslo Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Residentie Orkest and Zurich Tonhalle.
Every season he conducts the NHK Symphony (this year being no exception), with whom in 2006 he recorded the complete Schumann symphonies as part of an ongoing commitment to EXTON Records. He also appears regularly at the Pacific Music Festival and with the Mito Chamber Orchestra. Between 2001 and 2004 he conducted Japan’s first-ever complete Ring cycle with the NHK and Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestras.
Märkl was until 2006 Permanent Conductor of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. He conducted a complete Ring Cycle at the Deutsche Oper, has also been a regular guest at the Berlin State Opera, Vienna State Opera and the Semper Oper Dresden with whom he toured to Japan in November 2007, conducting Tannhäuser. He made his Royal Opera House debut with Götterdämmerung in 1996 and at the Metropolitan Opera with Il Trovatore in 1998.
Märkl has conducted many of North America’s top orchestras including those of Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Minnesota, St. Louis, Baltimore, Montreal, Toronto, Seattle, Atlanta and Dallas, and maintains continuing relationships with several of them – returning last season to Baltimore, St Louis and Toronto as well as appearing with the NSO Washington, and with a reinvitation to Philadelphia coming up in 2011.
Born in Munich, his (German) father was a distinguished concertmaster and his (Japanese) mother a solo pianist. Märkl studied violin, piano and conducting at the Musikhochschule in Hannover, going on to study with Sergiu Celibidache in Munich and with Gustav Meier in Michigan. In 1986 he won the conducting competition of the Deutsche Musikrat and a year later won a scholarship from the Boston Symphony Orchestra to study at Tanglewood with Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa. Soon afterwards he had a string of appointments in European opera houses followed by his first music directorships at the Staatstheater in Saarbrücken (1991-94) and at the Mannheim Nationaltheater (1994-2000).