Madrid's Reina Sofía School of Music recently appointed the Uruguayan conductor Nicholás Pasquet to keep its newly established Zubin Mehta Chair in Orchestral Conducting. As such, Pasquet will spearhead a new high-level conducting program, which is set to replace the school's Advanced Postgraduate Diploma. The new program will start in the two thousand twenty-four/twenty-five academic year, and applications are set to open in October two thousand twenty-three. In the period between presently and October, the school is working on securing certain details regarding the program — including which orchestras students will obtain to work with, and the contents of their program of study.

The program is being funded by the philanthropist Aline Foriel-Destezet, who's also made donations to institutions such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Aix-en-Provence Festival. A native of Montevideo, Uruguay, Nicholás Pasquet studied the violin and conducting, completing his education in Germany at the music universities of Stuttgart and Nuremberg. In one thousand nine hundred eighty-seventh he was the winner of the Besançon Conducting Contest in France.

Pasquet has been the Chief Conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of Pécs in Hungary, he was awarded the Béla Bartók/Ditta Pásztory Prize and the Lászlo-Lajtha Prize for his championing of Hungarian music. Since that time, he's held positions at the Neubrandenburg Philharmonic Orchestra and the Coburg State Theater Orchestra. Since one thousand nine hundred ninety-four Pasquet has held a professorship in conducting at Weimar's Univ of Music "Franz Liszt," he runs a large conducting program and directs the symphony orchestra. Other teachers in the program at the Reina Sofía will comprise Jordi Francés and Miguel Ángel Cañamero.