Jaap van Zweden

Jaap van Zweden is music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra since 2012 and assumed the same post with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra in January 2024. In addition, from 2018 until the end of the 2023-24 season, he was music director of the New York Philharmonic. In September 2026 Van Zweden will assume the post of music director of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. 

Jaap van Zweden studied violin with Davina van Wely. At sixteen, having won the Dutch National Violin Competition, he set off to New York to study at the Juilliard School of Music. In 1979 he was appointed concertmaster of the Concertgebouw Orchestra. 

Van Zweden traded in his bow for a conductor’s baton in 1997, going on to hold the position of chief conductor of the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, the Residentie Orchestra and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic in Antwerp, as well as that of chief conductor and artistic director of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. 

Following his appointment as music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 2008, a position he held until 2018, his international career took off. Van Zweden has conducted such leading orchestras as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.  

With the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra he released a recording of Wagner’s complete Ring cycle. His many critically acclaimed recordings further include the complete symphonies of Beethoven and Brahms, and Wagner’s Parsifal, which was awarded an Edison in 2012. That same year, he was hailed as Conductor of the Year by Musical America. 

Van Zweden first conducted the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1998. Since 2005 he has returned regularly as a guest conductor, most recently in January 2023.