Lahav Shani

Like his mentor Daniel Barenboim, Lahav Shani is active as both pianist and conductor. He is the music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra. Shani was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, on January 7, 1989. His father, Michael Shani, was a choral conductor. Shani took up the piano at age six, and he progressed to lessons with Arie Vardi at Tel Aviv’s Buchmann-Mehta School of Music. He also studied double bass with Israel Philharmonic bassist Teddy Kling. Shani went on to the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin, studying piano with Fabio Bidini and conducting with Christian Ehwald. He took up residence in Berlin, where he benefited from Barenboim’s conducting mentorship. In 2007, he appeared as a pianist with the Israel Philharmonic, and three years later, the orchestra’s conductor, Zubin Mehta, hired Shani as pianist and assistant conductor for an upcoming tour. In 2013, Shani won the International Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition. In 2015, Shani made his debut, as both conductor and pianist, with the Vienna Philharmonic, substituting for an ailing Franz Welser-Möst. Shani continued to be active as a pianist, and it was actually in that capacity that he made his recording debut in 2016, with flutist Eyal Ein-Habar and cellist Adi Tal on an album of chamber music by Mendelssohn and Louise Farrenc. That year, he was appointed principal guest conductor of the Vienna Symphony, a position he held from 2017 to 2020, and he also made a guest-conducting appearance with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, conducting the group once again from the keyboard. After that appearance, the Rotterdam musicians unanimously chose Shani as their next principal conductor. Shani supplanted Mehta, who had led the orchestra for 50 years, as music director of the Israel Philharmonic in 2020. That year, his tenure in Rotterdam was extended through 2026. In 2019, Shani joined violinist Renaud Capuçon and cellist Kian Soltani for a recording of trios by Tchaikovsky and Dvořák on the Erato label. In 2020, he made his first recording in Rotterdam, featuring Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92, and the Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58, the latter with himself on piano. He returned in 2022, leading the Rotterdam Philharmonic in a recording of Kurt Weill’s little-heard Symphony No. 2 and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47. ~ James Manheim