( dpa )- Jeffrey Tate, 64, director of music at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, Italy, promised Wednesday music for the people as part of his next job at the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra in Germany.
Tate, a Briton with a yen for contemporary classical music, is to take up a post there as chief conductor next year, succeeding Andrey Boreyko who leaves at the end of the current season.
"Culture is a social remedy which we musicians should take out onto the streets," Tate told reporters in Hamburg, promising concerts for children and concerts by schoolchildren performers.
Hailing the import from Italy as "Maestro Tate," orchestra chief Daniel Kuehnel said he was one of a rare group of conductors with a worldwide name for performing the classical music written in the past 20 or 30 years.
The post in Germany is his first as principal conductor.
The symphony, established 50 years ago and set to become the resident orchestra at the city's Laeisz Halle venue in 2009, is one of three professional orchestras in Hamburg.
The others are the Philharmonic Orchestra and the NDR Radio Symphony Orchestra.