Prince Albert II attended Kazuki Yamada’s final concert as artistic and musical director of the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra on Aug. 6 at the Prince's Palace in Monaco. The closing concert in the Cour d'Honneur ended with flowers and a standing ovation for Yamada, whose nearly decade-long tenure is ending this summer.
Cour d'Honneur farewell
The performance was the orchestra’s closing concert and centered on Franz Liszt and Maurice Ravel. Alexandre Kantorow joined the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra for Liszt’s Piano Concerto No, giving the farewell a program built around repertory associated with both precision and momentum.
After the performance, Prince Albert II personally greeted Yamada and embraced him. Yamada then received flowers from the musicians and audience members who had gathered for the concert, turning a formal program into an unmistakable send-off for a conductor who first came to the orchestra as a guest conductor before taking the post in 2016.
Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra transition
Yamada’s departure closes a run that began when he was appointed artistic and musical director in 2016. The handover does not stop the orchestra’s work, but it does mark the end of one artistic period at one of Monaco’s best-known cultural institutions and the start of a new chapter under Nathalie Stutzmann.
That transition has a small complication: Yamada’s farewell concert already took place on Aug. 6, yet his tenure is still described as ending this summer. In practice, that means the orchestra has already staged the public send-off while the formal change in leadership continues to move toward Stutzmann’s arrival.
Nathalie Stutzmann and the next chapter
For audiences who attended the concert, the immediate question is not whether the farewell happened — it did — but how quickly the orchestra’s artistic identity will shift under its incoming music director. The timeline for Stutzmann’s start has not been set in the facts available here, so the handover remains the next step to watch as Monaco closes one season and opens another.
