“Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla … directs with a command and sophistication well beyond her years; her grasp of architecture, texture, dramaturgy and orchestration is staggering, and the Vienna Philharmonic plays with extraordinary discipline and commitment for her. She has been something of a Weinberg expert for much of her short career, and her achievement with this production is incredible. ★★★★★”
Financial Times on Weinberg’s The Idiot at the 2024 Salzburg Festival
Known for her eloquent and commanding gestures, her dynamism and her bold programming, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla is one of today’s most sought-after guest conductors. While continuing her long-standing close relationship with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra as the ensemble’s Associate Artist, the Lithuanian conductor regularly collaborates with the world’s most prestigious orchestras in a rich and eclectic repertoire – and in both the concert hall and the opera house. Having triumphed at the 2024 Salzburg Festival with a new production of The Idiot by the long-neglected Polish composer Mieczysław Weinberg, of whose music she is a leading ambassador, in the 2024–25 season she becomes the first woman to conduct a Wiener Philharmoniker subscription concert.
Gražinytė-Tyla signed an exclusive relationship with Deutsche Grammophon in 2019. Her debut album for the label featured Weinberg’s Symphony No. 2 for string orchestra and Symphony No. 21 “Kaddish”. It was recorded with Gidon Kremer, the CBSO and Kremerata Baltica and released in May 2019 to coincide with the composer’s centenary year. Greeted with widespread public and critical acclaim, the album won the Gramophone recording of the year and the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis, and was nominated for a GRAMMY®, as well as earning Gražinytė-Tyla the Opus Klassik Conductor of the Year award.
For her second album, she teamed up again with Kremerata Baltica to record her compatriot Raminta Šerkšnytė’s Midsummer Song and De profundis. Paired with a DVD presenting Going for the Impossible, a documentary portrait of Gražinytė-Tyla, the album was released in November 2019.
Next came The British Project, a series of recordings of works by British composers made with the CBSO as part of its centenary celebrations. Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem and the Symphonic Suite from Walton’s Troilus and Cressida were released in October 2020 and March 2021 respectively. The full album, on which these two works were framed by Elgar’s Sospiri and Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, came out in July 2021.
Since then, Gražinytė-Tyla has returned to her mission to broaden awareness of the music of Weinberg. On Weinberg: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 7 and Flute Concerto No. 1 (September 2022) she was joined by The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and soloist Kirill Gerstein (harpsichord) for Symphony No. 7, and by the CBSO for the Flute Concerto – with soloist Marie-Christine Zupancic – and Symphony No. 3.
Her most recent album is a new recording of Weinberg’s first opera, The Passenger, a story of Holocaust survivors. The album captures the Teatro Real staging Gražinytė-Tyla conducted in spring 2024 (a co-production with the Bregenz Festival, Teatr Wielki and English National Opera), with the Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro Real and a cast including Amanda Majeski, Daveda Karanas, Nikolai Schukoff and Gyula Orendt. It was released digitally on 24 January 2025 and the filmed production is available to stream on STAGE+.
Recent highlights of Gražinytė-Tyla’s schedule, in addition to her successes with Weinberg’s operas in Madrid and Salzburg, include her debuts with the New York Philharmonic in October 2023 (“the kind of debut that immediately has you thinking about her future with the Philharmonic” – The New York Times) and with the Gewandhausorchester in Leipzig (November 2024).
Her forthcoming schedule features concerts with the Münchner Philharmoniker at Munich’s Isarphilharmonie, the Vienna Musikverein and Budapest’s Müpa (March/April 2025); her four dates with the Wiener Philharmoniker and soloist Yuja Wang at the Musikverein (May); performances with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in Paris, Linz and Vienna (also May); and a Brahms and Weinberg programme with the CBSO in Birmingham (June).
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla was born in Vilnius into a family of musicians. Her father, a choral conductor, and her mother, a pianist, encouraged her instinctive desire to perform. Mirga’s talent was nurtured and developed with childhood music lessons and she studied choral conducting and visual arts at the prestigious National M.K. Čiurlionis School of Art in Vilnius, giving her debut concert with choir at the age of sixteen.
A move to Austria and a place at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz opened Gražinytė-Tyla’s mind to the possibility of broadening her musical horizons. She embraced the prospect of conducting orchestras and progressed to study at the Bologna Conservatory, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Music Conservatory in Leipzig and Zurich University of the Arts, and was discovered by the German Conducting Forum in April 2009. Having been appointed Second Kapellmeister at the Theater Heidelberg in 2011, she then made her international breakthrough in 2012 when she won the prestigious Salzburg Young Conductors Award and went on to give her Salzburg Festival debut with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester. The following year she was appointed First Kapellmeister at Bern Opera, and from 2015 to 2017 was Music Director of the Salzburg Landestheater. A Gustavo Dudamel Fellow of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the 2012–13 season, she subsequently served as the orchestra’s Assistant Conductor for two seasons and as its Associate Conductor in 2016–17.
The CBSO was quick to recognise Gražinytė-Tyla’s exceptional talent. After their first concert together, she was immediately invited to return, and was then offered the post of Music Director, in succession to Sir Simon Rattle, Sakari Oramo and Andris Nelsons. She launched her tenure in September 2016. Innovative programming and intense, often revelatory performances became the hallmarks of her CBSO seasons, in repertoire spanning everything from Haydn and Mozart to Debussy, Mahler and Shostakovich, as well as new works by, among others, Hans Abrahamsen, Jörg Widmann and Raminta Šerkšnytė.
Gražinytė-Tyla served as the CBSO’s Principal Guest Conductor for the 2022–23 season and was appointed Associate Artist in the autumn of 2023. In 2019, she won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Conductor Award. The jury’s citation summed up her commitment to her work in Birmingham: “[She brings] her own vision [while] shaping a respectful, mutually fruitful partnership with the players…; plunging bravely and energetically into a vast and distinctive repertory; and captivating the city’s imagination beyond the concert hall.”
3/2025