Biography
Maxime Pascal, born in 1985 in Nantes, is a French conductor who quickly established himself as one of the most brilliant interpreters of 20th-century and contemporary music of his generation. His musical journey has been driven by a passionate exploration of sound. Upon entering the Paris Conservatory, Pascal relentlessly explored a vast repertoire, from classical works to pieces by 20th-century composers such as Morton Feldman, Gérard Grisey, and Pierre Boulez.
In March 2014, he was the first Frenchman to win the Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award.
In 2008, he co-founded with five other students of the Paris Conservatoire Le Balcon, an innovative collective known for its amplified concerts that allow the audience to immerse themselves "inside the sound." Le Balcon takes its name from Jean Genet's play, reflecting a deep exploration of representation and embodiment. The ensemble has become a key player in the contemporary music scene, dedicated to ambitious projects like Karlheinz Stockhausen's monumental Licht cycle. Maxime Pascal considers this project his life’s work, with plans to present the full cycle for the composer's centenary in 2028.
Maxime Pascal is a passionate advocate for French, twentieth century and new music, and makes it one of the foundations of his musical collaborations. In his operatic work, this has led him to creating Salvatore Sciarrino’s Ti vedo, ti sento, mi perdo at La Scala in 2017, which he later took to Staatsoper Berlin. In 2019 he performed Luca Francesconi’s Quartett with Teatro alla Scala, his third collaboration with the opera house. In the summer of 2023, he made his debut at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence with Le Balcon, performing the highly anticipated production of Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. Other operatic highlights of recent seasons include appearances at Vienna Festival with Lulu by Alban Berg as well as Bohuslav Martinů’s The Greek Passion at Salzburg Festival, which was named Best performance of the year 2023 by the Oper! Awards.
Maxime also explores his French heritage in his opera work, collaborating with Opéra de Paris on multiple occasions to perform works such as Daphnis et Chloé, Boléro, L’heure espagnole and Gianni Schicchi.
Since the start of the 2024-2025 season, Maxime Pascal is the musical conductor of the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra. In this first season, Maxime Pascal conducted programmes featuring Debussy, Schumann, Bruckner, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Schönberg, as well as Franz Berwald and Camille Pépin.
The 2025-2026 season will be rich in projects, with two Berlioz programmes, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, symphonies by Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Strauss, as well as works by Kaija Saariaho and Joe Hisaishi.
Read "Maxime Pascal Loves Surprises", his interview with the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra.
Over the coming months, he will conduct several operas and oratorios: Eötvös's Three Sisters, based on Chekhov, at the Salzburg Festival; Francesconi's Timon Études, based on Shakespeare, at the Verdi Festival; Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust at the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre; and Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, based on Maeterlinck, at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan.
He will also conduct symphonic and concert programmes with the Hallé, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Yomiuri Orchestra, the Norrkoping Orchestra and the RSO Wien.
Explore Maxime Pascal's 2025-2026 season.
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Photos © Nieto, Meng Phu, Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra della Rai, Monika Rittershaus
