Nathanaël Iselin

First Prize winner and Special Prize of the Orchestra at the 8th International Jorma Panula Conducting Competition, Nathanaël Iselin is a French conductor based in Scandinavia and the Netherlands.

Iselin’s background as a contemporary percussion player cultivated in him a refined sensibility to the palette of sound colors. Combining it with an extensive training in harmony at the Paris Conservatoire, he developed a remarkable versatility that spans both classical and contemporary repertoires. His sound landscape particularly flourishes in the late-romantic and modern styles, with colorist composers such as Debussy and Ravel, as well as Mahler, Strauss and Sibelius. Paired with his percussion-trained strong sense of rhythm, he feels at home with Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Bartók’s music.

Nathanaël Iselin started his conducting career as assistant conductor of the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, the first person to hold that position in Denmark. Shortly thereafter, he came to international attention by winning the prestigious Jorma Panula Competition in Finland. He was then appointed Conductor in Residence of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. He also won the second prize at the German Conducting Award, with the WDR Sinfonieorchester and Gürzenich-Orchester Köln. He was recently appointed Artistic Partner of the Kymi Sinfonietta in Finland, a role in which he will conduct a number of concerts each season and contribute to shaping the orchestra’s programming and artistic vision. He has also been appointed Associate Conductor of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, a position in which he will regularly conduct concerts with the SSO and work with the Singapore Symphony Choruses.

In the past seasons, notable highlights included conducting the Finnish Radio and Norwegian Radio National Orchestras, as well as Montpellier, Oulu, Odense, Aalborg, Iceland and Picardie Symphony, in pieces such as Berlioz “Symphonie Fantastique”, Bruckner 3rd symphony, Dvořák 8th, Debussy “La Mer”… Nathanaël is also a regular guest with the Copenhagen Philharmonic, the Aarhus Symphony, and Phion Orkest. He has also conducted orchestras such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France and the Danish National Orchestra, in various contexts other than public concerts.

On the lyrical scene, Nathanaël regularly conducts at Opera Hedeland, Denmark’s largest outdoor opera venue, where he led productions of Le Nozze di Figaro, Cenerentola, Carmen and Rigoletto. In 2025, he conducted a number of performances of Die Zauberflöte at Stockholm’s Folkopera. He also worked as a second conductor and assistant on Smetana’s The Bartered Bride at the Bern Opera, and Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten at the Cologne Opera, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and the Philharmonie de Paris.

Nathanaël Iselin has studied orchestra conducting in four of the most prestigious music universities in Europe : the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris, the Hochschule der Künste in Zürich and the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. He has been a Conducting Fellow at the Verbier Festival. He worked as an assistant conductor to Michael Tilson Thomas, Antonio Pappano, Susanna Mälkki, Vasily Petrenko, Barbara Hannigan, Osmo Vänskä, Eva Ollikainen, among others. Whilst a student he has been mentored by such renowned conductors as Iván Fischer, Mariss Jansons, Fabio Luisi, Sakari Oramo, Michael Schønwandt, Giordano Bellincampi, Johannes Schlaefli, Thomas Søndergård, Alexander Vedernikov, Simone Young and Jaap van Zweden.

He also received a bachelor’s degree in percussion and a master’s diploma in harmony from the Paris National Conservatoire, as well as diplomas in piano and music theory. As a percussionist, he has performed with the Ensemble Intercontemporain-CNSMDP, the Limoges Opera, the Nouvelle Europe Orchestra, led by conductors such as David Zinman, Dennis Russell Davies and Matthias Pintscher.