The Casa da Música has announced that the upcoming concert will symbolically celebrate the career of German conductor Peter Rundel by featuring excerpts from Frank Zappa’s “Yellow Shark,” first premiered by Ensemble Modern in 1992 under Rundel’s direction.
The Remix Ensemble, celebrating 25 years since its inception, has had Peter Rundel as its principal conductor since January 2005. That same year, he managed an artistic residency at IRCAM–Centre Pompidou in Paris, where he directed “Nachtmusik I,” a piece for ensemble and electronics by Emmanuel Nunes.
Rundel first conducted the Remix Ensemble in 2003, with a program that included works by Yannis Xenakis and António Pinho Vargas, as recalled by Casa da Música.
Over the past two decades, Rundel has led the ensemble in some of the most significant international events. Under his baton, the group has performed at major festivals and concert halls across European music capitals, as highlighted in a statement from Casa da Música. Their performances have graced the festivals of Strasbourg, Vienna, and Berlin, Printemps de Monte-Carlo, and concert halls like the Philharmonie Berlin, Wiener Konzerthaus, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, and Muziekgebouw Amsterdam.
Other noted venues include the Philharmonie Cologne, Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse, Piccolo Teatro Strehler in Milan, deSingel in Antwerp, the Grand Auditorium of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and the National Theatre of São Carlos, both in Lisbon.
Recognized as a leading ambassador of new Portuguese music, Rundel has elevated the international profile of both the Remix Ensemble and Casa da Música. His commitment to the works of young composers and his efforts in training instrumentalists and conductors from various countries were also acknowledged in the statement. The many academies he led with the Remix Ensemble were consistently sold out.
Peter Rundel’s unique human legacy is reflected in the relationships of respect and closeness he developed with all Casa da Música teams, especially its musicians, added the statement.
Born in 1958 in Friedrichshafen, Germany, Rundel studied violin with Igor Ozim and Ramy Shevelov and conducting with Michael Gielen and Peter Eötvös. From 1984 to 1996, he was a violinist with Ensemble Modern, which he also conducted. He served as artistic director for both the Flanders Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Kammerakademie Potsdam in Germany, which he founded.
Peter Rundel’s biography on the Karsten Witt Musik Management page highlights his work with orchestras including the Bavarian Radio, North German Radio, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, Radio France Philharmonic, and the Vienna Symphony. His work with contemporary music ensembles such as Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Intercontemporain, and Asko|Schönberg Ensemble is noted as well.
For the 2025-2026 season, Rundel’s schedule includes performances at the Hamburg and Cologne Philharmonics with baritone Matthias Goerne, the premiere of Jörg Widmann’s new version of “Die Schöne Müllerin” by Franz Schubert, and a performance in Vienna of Johannes Maria Staud’s version of the cycle, with tenor Christoph Prégardien, which debuted in Porto in October with the Remix Ensemble.
Today’s performance takes place in Paris with mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena, leading the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra in works by Georges Aperghis, Mikel Urquiza, Betsy Jolas, and Ondrej Adámek.
In June, Rundel premiered Philippe Manoury’s opera inspired by Karl Kraus’s “The Last Days of Mankind” in Cologne, receiving critical acclaim.
Among Rundel’s numerous accolades is the Grand International Prize from the Charles Cros Academy for the recording of Hèctor Parra’s opera “Les Bienveillantes,” released last year.
The Remix Ensemble made its stage debut several years before Casa da Música opened, on October 20, 2000, at the University of Aveiro auditorium. The program for that concert included the statement: “The concert we are about to witness marks, without exaggeration or circumstantial rhetoric, a historical moment for music in Portugal.”
Twenty-five years later, former artistic director António Jorge Pacheco noted last October, “the Remix is still here, still exists, and continues to fulfill its mission and the artistic profile initially designed.”
In the same manner at that time, composer António Pinho Vargas—linked to the creation of this ensemble as part of the Porto 2001 Advisory Council and having collaborated with Remix over the years—remarked that the Remix Ensemble’s story has fully realized its purpose over the past 25 years.
He emphasized the continuous presence of European composers or associations with projects presented at Casa da Música and the commissions often executed in co-production, demonstrating Remix’s entry into the specific circuits of contemporary music in Europe, where its prestige granted it a status difficult to achieve. He wrote, “So many years on, there is no equivalent in Portugal.”
António Jorge Pacheco also recalled the hundreds of concerts directed by Peter Rundel across Portugal and beyond, giving national audiences the chance to “encounter repertoire they did not know at all.”
The concert scheduled for next Tuesday at Casa da Música, at 7:30 p.m., will feature, besides the last piece Frank Zappa composed and debuted a year before his death, works by other American composers who helped define contemporary music, such as Charles Ives, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Conlon Nancarrow, and Frederick Rzewski.
The day before, a screening of Alex Winter’s documentary “Zappa” will take place.
