Winner of the Mahler Competition 2020, Finnegan is increasingly recognised for his extraordinary musicianship, his command of complex scores, and his intense and mature performances.
Following a week conducting the Bamberger Symphoniker in a variety of repertoire, Finnegan won this summer’s Mahler Competition, leading a final concert which included the world premiere of Miroslav Srnka’s move 04 ‘Memory Full’ and Mahler Symphony No. 4, with soloist Barbara Hannigan. Last season he made concert debuts conducting the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Resonanz, Klangforum Wien, RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, State Philharmonic of Kosice and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Future symphonic engagements include concerts with the London Philharmonic and BBC Philharmonic Orchestras, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Luxembourg Philharmonic, New Japan Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Bamberger Symphoniker, who following the competition, immediately re-invited him.
As much at home in the opera house as in the concert hall, his recent operatic engagements include his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, conducting Alice’s Adventures Under Ground (Gerald Barry); he was due to return and conduct a new production of The Turn of the Screw before its postponement as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Future plans include Rigoletto at the Royal Swedish Opera, The Turn of the Screw at the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, Eugene Onegin at Oper Frankfurt and a new production at the Tiroler Festival Erl.
As Music Director of the award-winning company Shadwell Opera, he collaborates with the UK’s finest young singers and instrumentalists, bringing stagings of seminal twentieth-century and contemporary works to new audiences. His performances with Shadwell Opera have received consistent acclaim in the national and international press – among them works by Benjamin, Maxwell Davies, Turnage. Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Last year, Shadwell Opera’s most ambitious project to date saw it tour with its orchestra and ensemble to the Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg, for the Russian premiere of Oliver Knussen Where the Wild Things Are.