Dinis Sousa to conduct the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem

Sir John Eliot Gardiner has withdrawn from his performances with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, scheduled for 29 February and 1 and 3 March 2024, for personal reasons. Dinis Sousa has kindly agreed to step in. The concerts will mark the Portuguese conductor’s debut with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Dinis Sousa is associate conductor of the Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras, founded by John Eliot Gardiner.  

  

Dinis Sousa will lead the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Monteverdi Choir in Ein deutsches Requiem by Johannes Brahms featuring soprano Lenneke Ruiten and baritone Christian Gerhaher. Brahms’s requiem will be preceded by two choral works, Heinrich Schütz’s Selig sind die Toten, die in dem Herrn sterben and Johann Christoph Bach’s Der Gerechte, ob er gleich zu zeitlich stirbt. Schütz’ Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen will be dropped from the programme.  

    

Dinis Sousa  

Dinis Sousa is principal conductor of the Royal Northern Sinfonia, and associate conductor of the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique – the first person in the history of the choir and orchestras founded by Sir John Eliot Gardiner to hold such a title. 

  

In the summer of 2023, he stepped in to lead the Monteverdi Choir and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique on a critically acclaimed European tour of Berlioz’s Les Troyens, including performances at the Salzburg Festival, Berlin Musikfest and the BBC Proms. 

  

October 2023 saw him conduct the Monteverdi Choir together with the English Baroque Soloists on a North American tour, with performances of Bach’s Mass in B minor and Handel’s L’Allegro, il Pensoroso ed il Moderato in Chicago, Ottawa, and at Carnegie Hall. 

  

Recent and upcoming guest-conducting engagements include the Philharmonia Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, the Gulbenkian Orchestra, and the Swedish Radio Symphony. Dinis Sousa is also the founder and artistic director of Orquestra XXI, an orchestra of musicians drawn from the global Portuguese diaspora.