The Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra (SPO) on Thursday announced four foreign conductors who will lead the orchestra for its six upcoming regular concerts, replacing former music director Chung Myung-whun, who stepped down late last year.
The four are Eliahu Inbal, Christoph Eschenbach, Yan Pascal Tortelier and Alexandre Bloch, it said.
Chung was originally scheduled to lead all of the orchestra's regular concerts this year, but he resigned in December over his wife's alleged slandering of the orchestra's former president.
So far this year, assistant conductor Choi Soo-yeoul has conducted two concerts and German guest conductor Eschenbach has conducted one, with six remaining.
The French conductor Totelier will lead the orchestra in the July 15 concert featuring Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4.
Totelier is a conductor emeritus of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and a principal guest conductor of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. He will start working as the chief conductor of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra (ISO) in September. This will be his first work with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra.
The concert has drawn much attention from local classical music fans as Cho Seong-jin, a rising South Korean pianist who won the prestigious 17th international Frederic Chopin piano competition in October, is scheduled to perform Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 with the orchestra.
The orchestra will also be led by Inbal, a renowned Israeli conductor who previously guest-conducted the Seoul Philharmonic on Aug. 24-25 last year, and the young French-born conductor Bloch, who will be in charge of the Dec. 9 concert.
On Dec. 28-29, it will perform Beethoven's monumental Symphony No. 9 under Eschenbach, a celebrated pianist and conductor who replaced Chung for the orchestra's first concert of the year in January.
Chung stepped down through a letter sent to the orchestra after his wife came under a police investigation over allegedly defaming Park Hyun-jung.
Park resigned as SPO's CEO in December 2014 after a dozen SPO members filed complaints with the police accusing her of sexually and verbally harassing them.
She was cleared of the charges in August, with the dozen employees booked on charges of defamation. Police also believe Chung's wife spread anonymous letters accusing Park of mistreating her employees.
Chung has also been under investigation for alleged embezzlement since March. (Yonhap)