Maxime Pascal is a passionate advocate for French, 20th-century and contemporary music. His opera credits include the world premiere of Salvatore Sciarrino’s Ti vedo, ti sento, mi perdo at La Scala, Luca Francesconi’s Quartett at La Scala, Peter Eötvös’s Sleepless at the Berlin State Opera and the Grand Théâtre de Genève, and the world premiere of Sivan Eldar’s Like Flesh at the Opéra de Lille. His passion for French repertory has taken him to venues such as the Paris Opéra, where he has conducted Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, Boléro and L’Heure espagnole. In 2016 he conducted Pelléas et Mélisande in Malmö, in 2019 he conducted Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ at the BBC Proms and in 2022 he returned to the Salzburg Festival for Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher.
The 2023/24 season has included Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise with Le Balcon at the George Enescu Festival, performances with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and the Hallé Orchestra, a revival of Die Dreigroschenoper in Paris, a new production of Carmen at the Theater Basel and returns to the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra and to the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa in Japan. In 2022/23 he conducted Lulu at the Wiener Festwochen, Die Dreigroschenoper at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and The Greek Passion at the Salzburg Festival.
Maxim Pascal is a founding member of the orchestra Le Balcon, with which he explores a wide repertory and dedicates himself to diverse projects that regularly integrate music with advanced sound and lighting systems. Collaborative projects have included Ariadne auf Naxos directed by Benjamin Lazar, a video spectacle on Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire with the Colombian artist Nieto, and Stockhausen’s Donnerstag aus Licht. The latter has led to a seven-year collaboration between the ensemble and the Philharmonie de Paris to perform Stockhausen’s complete Licht cycle. Maxime Pascal and his ensemble have worked with composers such as Pierre Boulez, George Benjamin, Peter Eötvös and Michaël Levinas.
Maxime Pascal is associate artist and artistic advisor for the Fondation Singer-Polignac in Paris. In 2014 he was the first French conductor to receive the Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award. From the 2024/25 season Maxime Pascal will be chief conductor of the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra.
