The name Maxime Pascal spread throughout the classical music world in 2014 when the then 28-year-old Frenchman won the Young Conductors Award at the Salzburg Festival. Within a short period of time, Maxime Pascal established himself as an outstanding interpreter of 20th-century and contemporary music, which became the basis for his international engagements and also brought him back to Salzburg several times, including in 2023 for Martinů’s ‘The Greek Passion’ – his debut with the Wiener Philharmoniker.
Born in Nantes in 1985, he is characterised by a high degree of intrepidity and curiosity. What he is looking for, what he wants to engage with and what he wants to perform is simply ‘good music’. And that, he says, ‘is not a question of era. There is good music in every era; you can find fascination and inspiration at all times, in all places.’
As the son of a jazz trombonist and a piano teacher, he had a broad musical spectrum from an early age. He took lessons in violin and piano, drew, wrote – and went to study at the famous Conservatoire in Paris, where François-Xavier Roth became his conducting teacher. Here, in one of the theory classes following in the footsteps of Olivier Messiaen, he learned not only to “analyse music comprehensively and from different perspectives, but also to write in the styles of different periods himself and to connect it with all the music that was composed before and after, including music from other parts of the world”. This comprehensive approach was both formative and inspiring. While still a student, Maxime Pascal founded the ensemble Le Balcon in 2008 with like-minded colleagues. Named after Jean Genet’s play, it is a highly innovative collective of music and music theatre makers that adapts to each project in terms of instrumentation, visual and scenographic design, and interaction with the sound system or electronic music.
