Manfred Honeck
Music Director
Manfred Honeck has firmly established himself as one of the world’s
leading conductors, whose distinctive and revelatory interpretations
receive great international acclaim. As Music Director of the
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, where his contract runs through the
2027-2028 season, he has entered his 17th season. Celebrated at home
and abroad, he and the orchestra continue to serve as cultural
ambassadors for the city of Pittsburgh. Guest appearances include
Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, as well as the major
venues of Europe and leading festivals such as the BBC Proms, Salzburg
Festival, Musikfest Berlin, Lucerne Festival, Rheingau Music Festival,
Beethovenfest Bonn, and Grafenegg Festival. In summer 2024, he leads
the Pittsburgh Symphony in a nine-city European Festivals Tour,
starting with their appearance as the only American orchestra at the
prestigious Salzburg Festival and concluding at Vienna Konzerthaus.
Manfred Honeck's successful work in Pittsburgh is being extensively
documented by recordings on the Reference Recordings label, featuring
works by Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Shostakovich, Strauss,
Tchaikovsky, and others. They have received a multitude of outstanding
reviews and awards, including many GRAMMY® nominations, and he and the
orchestra won the GRAMMY® for "Best Orchestral Performance" in 2018.
The most recent recording, Bruckner's Symphony No. 7, paired with
Resurrexit by Mason Bates, was released in July 2024 to great critical
acclaim.
Born in Austria, Manfred Honeck completed his musical training at the
University of Music in Vienna. His many years of experience as a
member of the viola section in the Vienna Philharmonic and Vienna
State Opera Orchestra have had a lasting influence on his work as a
conductor, and his art of interpretation is based on his determination
to venture deep beneath the surface of the music. He began his
conducting career as assistant to Claudio Abbado and as director of
the Vienna Jeunesse Orchestra. Subsequently, he was engaged by the
Zurich Opera House, where he was awarded the European Conducting Prize
in 1993. He has since served as one of three principal conductors of
the MDR Symphony Orchestra Leipzig, as Music Director of the Norwegian
National Opera, Principal Guest Conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic
Orchestra and Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, and Chief Conductor of the
Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Stockholm. In November 2023, he
was appointed Honorary Conductor by the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra,
following decades of close collaboration.
Manfred Honeck also has a strong profile as opera conductor. In his
four seasons as General Music Director of the Staatsoper Stuttgart, he
conducted premieres of operas by Berlioz, Mozart, Poulenc, Strauss,
Verdi, and Wagner. He has also appeared as guest at leading houses
such as Semperoper Dresden, Komische Oper Berlin, Théâtre de la
Monnaie in Brussels, Royal Opera of Copenhagen, and the Salzburg
Festival. In 2020, Beethoven’s anniversary year, he conducted a new
staging of Fidelio (1806 version) at the Theater an der Wien. In
autumn 2022, he made his much-acclaimed debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York,
leading a revival of Mozart’s Idomeneo. Beyond the
podium, Manfred Honeck has designed a series of symphonic suites,
including Janáček’s Jenůfa, Strauss’s Elektra, Dvořák’s Rusalka as
well as Puccini's Turandot which he regularly performs around the
globe. The most recent arrangement, of Strauss’s Salome, was premiered
by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 2023.
As a guest conductor, Manfred Honeck has worked with all leading
international orchestras, including Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra,
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig,
Staatskapelle Dresden, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Royal Concertgebouw
Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Accademia di
Santa Cecilia Rome and the Vienna Philharmonic. In the United States,
he has conducted all major US orchestras, including New York
Philharmonic, The Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los
Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony
Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony. He has also been Artistic
Director of the International Concerts Wolfegg in Germany for thirty
years.
In 2024-2025, Manfred Honeck will conduct fourteen wide-ranging
programs and several special projects in Pittsburgh, including all
four of the season's world premieres and commissions. He also will
return to the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony,
Concertgebouworkest Amsterdam, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, amongst others. In Bruckner's
anniversary year of 2024, he will continue to place a special focus on
the music of this composer.
Manfred Honeck holds honorary doctorates from several universities in
the United States and was awarded the honorary title of Professor by
the Austrian Federal President. In 2018, the jury of the International
Classical Music Awards declared him "Artist of the Year".
Please do not shorten or revise without permission of the
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
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