Marc Trautmann – Press

Honegger: Les Aventures du roi Pausole
Opéra National du Rhin

Opéra International, Paris
Conductor Marc Trautmann and the Mulhouse musicians deserve credit for successfully carrying off a musically very perilous undertaking, bringing spice to this often delicate music.

Financial Times, London
The Mulhouse Orchestra under Marc Trautmann played with infectious mastery, and one clearly sensed that everyone was enjoying the communicative spirit of the music, whose eclectic style overflows with a magnificent freedom, always within Honegger’s carefully crafted art, swinging between Offenbach-style pastiche, overblown sentimentality and modernism.

L’Alsace, Strasbourg
Conducted by Marc Trautmann, the Mulhouse Orchestra deftly brings out the thousand and one finely honed subtleties of the scrupulous craftsman Honegger always wished to be.

Opera, London
Although the work’s three acts were played without an interval, there was not a single longueur, thanks on the one hand to the constant activity on stage, and on the other to Marc Trautmann’s immaculate conducting.

Badisches Tagblatt, Freiburg
The Opéra du Rhin has now unearthed the work from the treasure chest where it lay dormant. For Marc Trautmann and the musicians of the Mulhouse Orchestra, this meant excellent work in bringing out relief and persuasion, a rewarding task they carried out with fire and a rhythmic precision full of verve.

Le Matin, Brussels
The young conductor Marc Trautmann leads the team with attentive zest.

Le Moniteur, Strasbourg
Marc Trautmann and a Mulhouse Orchestra in fine form brought this operetta off successfully. Marc Trautmann gave it life, humour, the right rhythm and also seriousness, without the slightest weakness throughout two hours of performance.

Libre Belgique, Brussels
Under Marc Trautmann, the Mulhouse Orchestra, called upon in a very exposed chamber register, offers verve and colour.

Kultur, Freiburg
[The staging] lacked the decent restraint of playful simplicity offered by the score: the latter could only unfold as a modern, concentrated form in the orchestra, under the astute direction of Marc Trautmann. Only here did the work remain a convincing sonic plea for an outmoded theatrical genre.

Les Echos, Paris
Marc Trautmann knows how to bring out the colours of a refined orchestration. His first merit is to show that, treated with dignity, the light muse still stands every chance on the operatic stage.

Basler Zeitung, Basel
Under Marc Trautmann, the Mulhouse Symphony Orchestra played Honegger’s spirited music with warm elegance.

Rheinpfalz, Kaiserslautern
All of this is served by the Mulhouse Orchestra, conducted by Marc Trautmann with elegance and wit.

Offenbach: Les Contes d'Hoffmann
Portland Opera, USA

The Columbian, Vancouver
Visually and aurally, the audience really has no time to be bored. This is due, among other things, to the solid orchestral support provided by conductor Marc Trautmann. (...) This production is so successful, so exhilarating, that it is almost a challenge thrown down to the Portland audience.

Debussy: Le Martyre de saint Sébastien (complete version)
Pécs Symphony Orchestra, Hungary

Muzsika, Budapest
Trautmann is truly an excellent conductor, sensitive, of refined musicality, meditative and lyrical rather than severe and dramatic in character. The very slow unfolding of the work may not have appealed to anyone unfamiliar with this style; but for those who could appreciate it, all was colour and flavour; every moment brought a new emotion. The orchestra shimmered with admirable, magnificently Debussyan colours; the chorus also enjoyed a fully deserved success.

Bizet: Les Pêcheurs de perles
Wellington City Opera, New Zealand

Sunday Times, Wellington
The musical side is admirable. Wellington City Opera is fortunate to have Marc Trautmann, a young French conductor on the rise. He led the orchestra with fine discipline, drawing wonders from the cellos, horns and woodwinds, and revealed to us Bizet’s extraordinary orchestration. (...) Musically, this is a magnificent production, and it is the music that counts.

Gabriel Pierné: Les Enfants à Bethléem
Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille

Midi Libre, Marseille
Angelic, seraphic, celestial? Words fail to describe the penultimate concert of the Marseille Festival of Sacred Music. It is hard to find words – one feels their limits all the more keenly – when one must bear witness to an emotion that brought tears to the eyes here and there. Les Enfants à Bethléem, a mystery for narrator, soloists, children’s chorus and orchestra by Gabriel Pierné, emerged for many from an obscurity in which it is incomprehensible that it should remain. An enchantment, both in the music and in the performance: from the children’s chorus, from the young soloists, to be congratulated on their voices and their impeccable attacks – over which, it is true, conductor Marc Trautmann kept a very watchful eye, finding the breath of these pages and expressing their atmosphere.

Hebei Symphony Orchestra, China
French tour

Dauphiné libéré, Annecy
From the very first notes, the Hebei Symphony Orchestra seized the audience by the heart and did not let go for two hours of intense, palpable emotion. Marc Trautmann conducted his ensemble with professionalism and ease, setting the tone for all his musicians, whose complementarity was striking. The hall resounded with a thunder of ovations as the orchestra left the stage, and they graciously returned for an encore.

Poulenc: Dialogues des Carmélites
Portland Opera, USA

Opera Magazine, London
The whole Portland Opera company, under conductor Marc Trautmann and director David Edwards, sustained the opera’s tension, blending music and well-paced scenes perfectly to build the drama.

Opera News, New York
Sung in French, the work stood out above all for its extraordinarily beautiful presentation. Marc Trautmann’s particularly lyrical conducting, which avoids grandstanding, made Dialogues des Carmélites a highly spiritual experience, more “French” than “verismo” in atmosphere, less tearful than in other productions.

Willamette Week, Portland
The Old Prioress is masterfully sung and acted by Rosalind Elias, while Poulenc’s music – which conductor Marc Trautmann makes effervescent – weaves dark strings, brass and woodwinds into a subtle fabric of poignant tension.

Oregonian, Portland
Marc Trautmann conducted the orchestra with unfailing presence.

Reynaldo Hahn: Le Marchand de Venise
Portland Opera, USA

Opera News, New York
Conductor Marc Trautmann, constantly attentive to his singers, brought out all the riches of Hahn’s score. As a result, in thirty years of attending the [Portland] Civic Auditorium, with its unforgiving acoustics, I have never heard each singer’s vocal qualities so finely.

Opéra International, Paris
Marc Trautmann clearly knows his Reynaldo Hahn. He conducts with ease, and with punch too, this sensitive, refined, sophisticated music, these Mozartian ariettas, naive and immortal, this art of articulation, precision and nuance, which is neither old-fashioned, nor syrupy, nor conventional.

France Musique, Paris
Marc Trautmann conducted in an extremely refined manner. He has a great deal of talent. Everything was of rare musical beauty.
Antoine Livio

Opera, London
Marc Trautmann conducted with presence and delicacy.

Seattle Day News, Seattle
Conductor Marc Trautmann, who was behind the initiative to stage The Merchant of Venice, led the orchestra with a sure hand.

La Lettre du Musicien, Paris
A goldsmith’s work, that of Marc Trautmann, in recovering the original fragrance of a work that strays far from Shakespeare’s drama. (...) Alain Fondary and Maryse Castets were the only French singers in a well-matched cast with perfect pronunciation. Here again, the conductor’s work deserves emphasis. Marc Trautmann gave the work all the brilliance it requires.

The Oregonian, Portland
Marc Trautmann led the singers with particular attention to nuance and articulation.

Menotti: The Telephone
Milhaud: Le Pauvre Matelot
Opéra National de Bordeaux

Opéra International, Paris
The Orchestre National de Bordeaux Aquitaine, conducted with fire by Marc Trautmann, occupies the left side of the stage, tiered along a staircase, which shows off each instrument.

Xu Shu-Ya / Gao Xingjian: Snow in August
Opéra de Marseille

Opéra International, Paris
The rigorous and committed approach of Marc Trautmann, who had conducted the premiere of the first version of Snow in August in Taiwan, spurred on the Marseille Opera Orchestra, as well as the chorus, singing in Chinese for the first time.

Opera Magazine, London
The conviction and power of Marc Trautmann’s musical direction galvanised the company so that our attention was held from beginning to end.

Offenbach: La Périchole
Théâtre d’Irigny, Lyon

Le Progrès de Lyon, Lyon
The pleasant surprise comes from the pit, where Marc Trautmann, who skilfully reorchestrated the score, conducts the musicians of the Opéra de Lyon with inspiration.

Abeilleinfo, online
The transcription is by Marc Trautmann, who revised the score with great intelligence and talent. The whole produces a great richness of musical colour.