Classical Preview: Chaslin offers three gifts to concert audience

Have you ever wished you were a famous conductor, a brilliant virtuoso pianist, or maybe a gifted and prolific composer that includes operas among your list of works?

If your name happens to be Frederic Chaslin you are enjoying a life combining all three, as next Thursday’s audience at Huddersfield Town Hall will discover.

Born in Paris in 1963 he came to the notice of influential musicians while still a student, and was soon on the international circuit as pianist and conductor, more recently appointed chief conductor of the Santa Fe Opera and shortly taking the same position with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.

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He appears with the Orchestra of Opera North in the opening programme of a new Huddersfield season in which he is the soloist and conductor in Ravel’s Piano Concerto; directs the world premiere of Gypsy Dance from his opera Wuthering Heights, and conducts Saint-Saens’ ‘Organ’ Symphony with Joseph Cullen as soloist.

The orchestra continue in their role as resident ensemble, playing nine concerts divided between Huddersfield and Dewsbury, and high on your “must not miss list” will be the centenary of Scott’s Antarctic heroic quest marked by a performance of Vaughan Williams’s Sinfonia Antarctica (February 12), with Walton, Vaughan Williams, Britten and Elgar featuring in the Queens Diamond Jubilee Concert’ (May 21).

Huddersfield Town Hall, Orchestra of Opera North, September 22, 7.30pm. 01484 223200, www.operanorth.co.uk