The wait is over: CSO announces who will replace Louis Langrée as music director

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra named Romanian-born conductor Cristian Macelaru as its new music director Wednesday afternoon.

It will be some time before we have a chance to hear him conduct with any regularity, though. Officially, the 44-year-old Grammy winner won’t become “music director” until the 2025-2026 season. For the upcoming season – 2024-2025 – he will be listed as the Music Director Designate.

In fact, his next scheduled performances here are 10 months away, in February 2025. The 2024-2025 season announced by the CSO last month lists him as the conductor for a pair of performances on Feb. 8 and 9.

Macelaru is far from unknown to regular CSO patrons. He has conducted here on several occasions, most recently in February, when he led a program that included works by Witold Lutosławski and Dmitri Shostakovich. Interestingly, though, he made his Cincinnati debut not with the CSO, but with the Cincinnati Opera, when he led the company’s 2015 production of “Il Trovatore.”

Like his predecessor at the CSO, Louis Langrée, Macelaru is a champion of new orchestral repertoire. Despite his relative youth, he has commissioned premieres from 52 composers, including Tan Dun, Gabriela Lena Frank, Jake Heggie, Nico Muhly and Gabriella Smith, among others.

As with most other 21st-century conductors, Macelaru holds positions with several orchestras simultaneously. Currently, he is Artistic Director of the George Enescu Festival and Competition (Romania), Music Director of the Orchestre National de France (Paris), Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Interlochen Center for the Arts’ World Youth Symphony Orchestra (Michigan), Music Director and Conductor of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music (Santa Cruz, Calif.) and Chief Conductor of the WDR Sinfonieorchester in Cologne, Germany.

“I am overjoyed and humbled by the opportunity to become Music Director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra,” he said in a prepared statement issued by the CSO.

Born in Timișoara, Romania, in 1980, he was the youngest in a family of 10 children. At 17, he came to the United States to study violin at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan. Two years later, he became the youngest concertmaster in the history of the Miami Symphony Orchestra.

Besides his many engagements as a guest conductor, Macelaru has been extremely active in recording music, an area where the CSO’s profile has dipped precipitously in recent years. Macelaru’s recent releases include the complete symphonies of Saint-Saëns on Warner Classics with the Orchestre National de France on top of albums featuring works by Bartók and Dvořák on Linn Records with the WDR Sinfonieorchester. Earlier this month, the Deutsche Grammophon label released a recording of him conducting Enescu’s Symphonies 1-3 and the composer’s two Romanian Rhapsodies with the Orchestre National de France.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra names Louis Langrée's replacement