Alexander Briger
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Alexander Briger AO |
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Alexander Briger Sydney, Australia |
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| Website | alexanderbriger |
Alexander Briger AO (born c. 1969) is an Australian classical conductor. He is the nephew of the conductor Sir Charles Mackerras, and both are descended from the composer Isaac Nathan.
Alexander Briger was born in Sydney and attended the Sydney Grammar School, where his uncle Alastair Mackerras was the headmaster. He had his first violin lessons there. He was inspired to become a conductor at age 12, when he saw another uncle, Sir Charles Mackerras, conduct the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Mahler's Fourth Symphony. He left Grammar in 1987, then continued his violin studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. In 1991 he went to the Richard Strauss Conservatorium in Munich to undertake a post-graduate degree in conducting. He won first prize at the International Competition for Conductors in the Czech Republic in 1993. He won the right to study under Pierre Boulez at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2000. He has since worked extensively with Boulez and with Sir Charles Mackerras. Boulez introduced Briger to Simon Rattle, who invited him to conduct the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. He and his family moved to London in 1998.
In 2002 he filled in for the scheduled conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra, who was taken ill. He also appeared at the BBC Proms and the Berlin Festival with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group that year. He was invited to take the London Philharmonic Orchestra on a tour of China in 2004. That same year he conducted Britten's The Rape of Lucretia at Covent Garden, becoming only the fourth Australian to conduct there, after Mackerras, Richard Bonynge and Simone Young. He also conducted Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Glyndebourne Festival. In 2005 he made his debut with the Orchestre de Paris.
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