Ciconia Consort & Dick van Gasteren
Biography Ciconia Consort & Dick van Gasteren
Dick van Gasteren
Since its founding in 2012, Dick van Gasteren has been conductor and artistic director of the string orchestra Ciconia Consort. In addition, Van Gasteren is permanent guest conductor of the famous Orquesta Simón Bolívar, which he conducted in symphonies by Schumann, Bruckner and Mahler, among others. He also regularly conducts other Venezuelan orchestras of 'El Sistema' such as Francisco de Miranda and Teresa Carreño and, as a teacher at the Conservatorio Itinerante de Venezuela, gives conducting lessons and master classes to talented young conductors.
Dick van Gasteren studied cello, orchestral conducting, art history and law. He began his musical training at the age of nine as a cellist and continued his studies at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague with Anner Bijlsma (master's degree 1988). He studied orchestral conducting with Jan Stulen (Higher Certificate 1990), followed by lessons from Bernard Haitink in London. He studied art history and law at Leiden University, where he obtained the title of master of law in 2003.
Van Gasteren took cello master classes with Heinrich Schiff and Godfried Hoogeveen, among others, substituted with several Dutch orchestras and gave recitals throughout the Netherlands, including in the Kleine Zaal of the Concertgebouw. He was laureate at the conducting master class of the 'Accademia Musicale Chigiana' in Siena led by Ferdinand Leitner and at the Vienna Meisterkurs. As Haitink's assistant, he conducted the Fernorchester at a concert of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in the Mahler Festival Amsterdam (1995).
Dick van Gasteren was a guest conductor with the Limburg Symphony Orchestra and the North Holland Philharmonic Orchestra, among others, with various concert programmes. As part of the Pasar Malam, he conducted six sold-out performances at the Koninklijke Schouwburg The Hague of Constant van de Wall's Dutch-Indonesian opera Attima (1917). Abroad, he conducted numerous opera productions at the Oldenburgisches Staatstheater (Don Pasquale, Die Fledermaus, Othello and Elektra) and conducted the Wiener Klangforum Orchester and the Nürnberger Symphoniker with works by Stravinsky (Firebird), Beethoven (fifth symphony), Mendelssohn (Italian symphony), Respighi, Saint-Saëns and Berlioz, among others.
In 2003, he featured in two episodes of the television programme 'Het klokhuis', which focused on the profession of conducting. In October 2010, Walburgpers published his book 'About youth orchestras and the didactics of conducting'. He also published several Dutch symphonic works by Johannes Josephus Viotta that he rediscovered.
For ten years, Dick van Gasteren successfully conducted the Viotta orchestra in major works of orchestral literature (Stravinsky, Strauss, Mahler, Bruckner, Rachmaninov and Shostakovitch) and could regularly be seen and heard with this orchestra in major concert halls such as the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and on Dutch radio and TV. Five successful tours abroad (including Prague, Florence, Salzburg and Venice) can be looked back on with satisfaction. In the summer of 2007, he led the Viotta Orchestra to a first prize in the international orchestra competition Summa Cum Laude and conducted the final concert in the Golden Hall of the Wiener Musikverein.
