Conductor Laureate Andrés Orozco-Estrada Conducts the Violin Star and the Houston Symphony In Brahms Violin Concerto
Photos HERE
HOUSTON (February 17, 2025) – Celebrated, London-based, Italian violin virtuosa Francesca Dego is set to make her Houston Symphony debut performing Brahms’s Violin Concerto with the orchestra under the direction of Conductor Laureate Andrés Orozco-Estrada. Dego is stepping in to the classical subscription concert on March 7, 8, and 9, 2025 at Jones Hall. The previously announced Hilary Hahn has withdrawn due to her ongoing recovery from an injury.
Francesca Dego’s 2024-25 season includes her debut with the London Symphony Orchestra with Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. She also performs with the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, Sinfonica di Milano, La Toscanini, Vancouver Symphony, Detroit and San Diego symphony orchestras, Orchestre de Cannes, and makes her debut with the Luxembourg Philharmonic at Flaneries Musicales de Reims. In recital, she appears at the Wigmore Hall with Alessandro Taverna, and Belfast International Chamber Festival and Dubai Opera with Francesca Leonardi. She’s just made a commercial recording of the Brahms Violin Concerto with conductor Dalia Stasevska and the BBC Symphony.
The program for the March 7, 8, and 9, 2025 concerts remains unchanged, comprising Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra, and Brahms’s Schicksalslied with the Houston Symphony Chorus, in addition to the Brahms Violin Concerto. Tickets are available by phone or text at 713-224-7575, online at www.houstonsymphony.org, or in person at the Symphony’s Patron Services Center on the Courtyard Level of Jones Hall.
About Francesca Dego
Celebrated as both a recitalist and concerto performer of notable distinction, Francesca Dego is one of the most sought-after violinists on the international scene.
Her 2024-25 season includes debuts with the London Symphony Orchestra with Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Maestro Luisi with Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. She also performs with the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, Sinfonica di Milano, La Toscanini, Vancouver Symphony, Detroit and San Diego symphony orchestras, Orchestre de Cannes, and makes her debut with the Luxembourg Philharmonic at Flaneries Musicales de Reims. In recital, she appears at the Wigmore Hall with Alessandro Taverna, and Belfast International Chamber Festival and Dubai Opera with Francesca Leonardi.
Recent engagement highlights include appearances across Japan with NHK Symphony Orchestra conducted by Fabio Luisi, with Washington National and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestras, Orquesta de Castilla y León, and Orchestre de Champs Elysées with Maestro Herreweghe, as well as debuts with Swedish Radio Symphony, Bergen Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, West Australian Symphony, and Queensland Symphony Orchestras. Re-invitations include the Hallé, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra Haydn, and Brucknerhaus Linz. She has also appeared with the Tokyo Metropolitan, and Tokyo Symphony orchestras, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, at St Petersburg’s renowned Stars of the White Nights Festival, and in spring 2023 jumped in at short notice to make her Canadian debut with the orchestra of the National Arts Centre Ottawa. Recent European highlights include Bernstein’s Serenade at La Fenice, appearances with Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice; Oviedo Philharmonic; Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo; Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne; Orquestra de Sevilla and Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana; L’Orchestra dell’Opera Carlo Felice Genova; Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; and at the Teatro Regio di Torino. UK highlights include the BBC Symphony, Ulster, Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic, and Royal Scottish National orchestras, as well as the National Youth Orchestra.
In 2023 she made her recording debut with the London Symphony Orchestra as the first artist to be featured on the new Apple Classical platform in ‘A New Dawn’ featuring Bologne’s Chevalier de St Georges Concerto No. 2 alongside conductor Jonathon Heyward. She regularly collaborates with esteemed conductors, amongst them Fabio Luisi, Philippe Herreweghe, Daniele Rustioni, Lionel Bringuier, Dalia Stasevska, Markus Stenz, Donato Renzetti, Gemma New, Jader Bignamini, Alpesh Chauhan, Asher Fisch, Markus Poschner, Krzysztof Urbański, and Xian Zhang.
A keen chamber musician, Francesca enjoys performing with artists including Francesco Piemontesi, Daniel Müller-Schott, Timothy Ridout, Jan Lisiecki, Salvatore Accardo, Alessandro Carbonare, Mahan Esfahani, Bruno Giuranna, Shlomo Mintz, Narek Hakhnazaryan, Federico Colli, Mischa Maisky, Antonio Meneses, Martin Owen, Alessandro Taverna, Enrico Dindo, Alessio Bax, Roman Simovic, and Francesca Leonardi.
Francesca is signed exclusively to Chandos Records. With a growing discography, her most recent recording of the violin concertos of Busoni and Brahms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Dalia Stasevska was released in March 2024, for which she was awarded the prestigious Franco Abbiati Prize. Her recordings of the complete Mozart violin concertos with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Sir Roger Norrington were received to unanimous critical acclaim, including BBC Music Magazine five star ‘Record of the month’. In June 2024 Chandos released an album of the horn trios of Brahms, Ligeti, Mozart, and Schumann, for which Francesca teamed up with Martin Owen, horn, and Alessandro Taverna, piano. Other releases on Chandos include the recital disc Il Cannone with previous releases on Deutsche Grammophon including concertos by Paganini and Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari alongside the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Daniele Rustioni and a complete survey of the violin sonatas by Beethoven and Paganini’s Caprices.
Francesca also has a passion for contemporary music and counts herself a dedicatee of the works of Michael Nyman, Carlo Boccadoro, Cristian Carrara, Nicola Campogrande, and Marco Taralli, amongst others. She is a frequent contributor to specialist music magazines including penning a monthly column for Suonare News and has written articles and opinion pieces for The Strad, BBC and Classical Music Magazines, Musical Opinion, and Strings Magazine. Francesca has also recently published her first book with Mondadori — Tra le Note. Classica: 24 chiavi di lettura — in which she explores the relevance, application, and deeper understanding of classical music in the modern day.
About Andrés Orozco-Estrada
Energy, elegance and spirit – that is what particularly distinguishes Andrés Orozco-Estrada as a musician. After a wonderful collaboration with the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai in May 2022, Andrés Orozco-Estrada is appointed the new principal conductor of the Rai Orchestra from the 23/24 season, whose 30th anniversary he will celebrate in October 24 with two festive concerts in Turin.
From the 2025-26 season, he will take up the position of GMD of the city of Cologne and Gürzenich Kapellmeister. Orozco-Estrada attaches great importance to inspiring all the people of Cologne with music and for music, and to representing and presenting Cologne as a city of music internationally. This season, a series of performances of Carmen will mark his opera-debut as GMD-designate.
Right at the beginning of the 2024-25 season, Orozco-Estrada makes his debut with performances of ‘Le Nozze di Figaro’ at the Semperoper Dresden. Further debuts will take him to the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, the KBS Symphony Orchestra in Seoul and the Spanish National Orchestra (OCNE) in Madrid.
Orozco-Estrada has been re-invited to the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Orchestre National de France, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and the radio orchestras of SWR, WDR and the DSO Berlin. He will also return to the hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt (Principal Conductor 2014-2021) and the Houston Symphony Orchestra (Music Director 2014-2022).
Born in Medellín (Colombia), Andrés Orozco-Estrada began his musical education by playing the violin, receiving his first conducting lessons at the age of 15. In 1997 he moved to Vienna, where he was accepted into the conducting class of Uroš Lajovic, a student of the legendary Hans Swarowsky, at the renowned Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst.
Since October 2022, Orozco-Estrada has been professor of orchestral conducting at the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts.
About the Houston Symphony
Under the leadership of Music Director Juraj Valčuha, the Grammy Award-winning Houston Symphony continues to inspire and engage diverse audiences in Houston and beyond with exceptional musical performances and enduring community impact. The Symphony held its inaugural performance at The Majestic Theater in downtown Houston on June 21, 1913. Now in its second century as one of America’s premier orchestras, the Houston Symphony is one of the oldest performing arts organizations in Texas and remains a cultural cornerstone of the region.
With an annual operating budget of $40.7 million, the Symphony presents over 130 concerts each year, making it one of the largest performing arts organizations in Texas. Its reach extends far beyond the concert hall, delivering more than 600 performances annually at schools, community centers, hospitals, and other venues, engaging over 160,000 people throughout Greater Houston.
The Symphony’s innovative response to the COVID-19 pandemic—completing its 2020-21 Season with in-person audiences and weekly livestreams—earned national recognition and the ASCAP Foundation’s Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Broadcast/Media Award. Its commitment to innovation continues, with its 2024-25 Season reaching audiences in over 45 countries and all 50 states via livestreaming, making it one of the few American orchestras to sustain such global digital engagement.
Renowned for its artistry, the Symphony has a distinguished recording legacy under prestigious labels, including Koch International Classics, Naxos, RCA Red Seal, and Pentatone. Highlights include a Grammy and ECHO Klassik Award-winning live recording of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck and recent releases such as Jimmy López Bellido’s Aurora and Ad Astra (2022) and Jennifer Higdon’s Duo Duel (2023).
The Symphony’s educational impact is equally remarkable, with its Harry and Cora Sue Mach Student Concert Series reaching over 50,000 students annually. Its In Harmony after-school program and partnerships with institutions like the Houston Methodist Hospital, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Texas Children’s Hospital further demonstrate the Symphony’s commitment to fostering community connections and accessibility to the arts.
With a vision centered on artistic excellence, community engagement, and accessibility, the Houston Symphony remains a cultural leader in Houston and a global ambassador for the transformative power of music.
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Eric Skelly: eric.skelly@houstonsymphony.org
Jessica Henderson: jessica@theckpgroup.com