Thomas Hengelbrock

“A conductor who is second to none” (La Terasse, Paris), and moreover researcher, scholar, musical-creative freethinker, and stage director – the name Thomas Hengelbrock has many facets. As a whole, they combine to make up one of the most complex and exciting artist personalities of our time.

With the 2011/2012 season, Thomas Hengelbrock is to succeed Christoph von Dohnányi as chief conductor of the NDR Symphony Orchestra. In the summer of 2011 he will make his debut with Wagner’s Tannhäuser, directed by Sebastian Baumgartner, at the Bayreuth Festival. As founder and director of the Balthasar Neumann Chorus and Ensemble, he produces internationally sought-after concert and opera projects.

Opera conductor Thomas Hengelbrock’s interest is the entire spectrum of the repertoire – from Baroque rarities such as Il Giustino by Giovanni Legrenzi or Niobe by Agostino Steffani through Mozart’s operas, Bernstein’s West Side Story, and Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, to contemporary works such as Dallapiccola’s Il Prigioniero. Thomas Hengelbrock rigorously delves into the intellectual world of former times and of today, and into the listening comprehension associated with it. In this manner, he critically calls into question traditional interpretational and listening customs, for example, with his reading of Rossini’s, Bellini’s, and Verdi’s operas on historical instruments. And the press applauds: “ Bellini’s music has possibly never been heard as sumptuously” (Opernwelt), “Today, Mozart can hardly be performed with more excitement and intensity” (Bonner Generalanzeiger), “Illuminating conducting” (AFP), “So beguiling that it leaves one breathless” (ZDF).

Hengelbrock’s involvement with musical theater never remains restricted to the orchestra pit, but is marked by an extraordinarily close collaboration with stage directors such as Philippe Arlaud, Achim Freyer, Pina Bausch, Sebastian Baumgarten, and Luc Bondy. Thomas Hengelbrock has himself appeared as a stage director with highly regarded productions, including in 2006 with Il Re pastore, which opened Mozart Year at the Salzburg Festival, and Don Giovanni at the Feldkirch-Festival.

Thomas Hengelbrock’s concert activities are likewise distinguished by unconventional program concepts. Here, too, he moves effortlessly between the poles of the almost forgotten and the contemporary, and has been dedicating himself increasingly to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Moreover, he reconquered for the repertoire Antonio Lotti’s Requiem and works by today hardly known masters from J. S. Bach’s music library, recording them for the first time on CD. At the same time, he enjoys intense collaborations with contemporary composers, such as Jan Müller-Wieland, Quigang Chen, Erkki-Sven Tüür, and Simon Wills, having premiered many of their works.

In an innovative combination of music, acting, literature, and dance, Hengelbrock has created extraordinary scenic projects. “Metamorphoses of Melancholy” or “Italian Carnival Music” represent a special form of musical theater that follows its own dramatic course. With the actors Klaus Maria Brandauer and Graham Valentine, music for the stage such as Grieg’s Peer Gynt, Beet-hoven's Egmont, or Purcell's King Arthur are revived within the context of their original dramatic texts.

This genre-spanning approach is inspired by Balthasar Neumann of Würzburg – all-round genius, the most important German architect of the Baroque era, and builder of the Würzburg residence and the pilgrimage church Vierzehnheiligen. Based on Neumann’s model of the architectonic juxtaposition of building, painting, sculpture, and garden, Thomas Hengelbrock and his ensembles also strive for an intensive combination of music and other arts: the Balthasar-Neumann-Choir, founded in 1991, and the instrumental ensemble of the same mane, established in 1995, constitute for Thomas Hengelbrock the ideal forum for the realization of artistic ideas of the Renaissance to the Modern.

Thomas Hengelbrock was artistic director of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen (1995–98) and music director of Vienna’s Volksoper (2000–03). In 2001 he founded the Feldkirch Festival, of which he was artistic director until 2006. He conducts internationally renowned ensembles on a regular basis, including the Munich Philharmonic, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Symphony Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio, and the Symphony Orchestra of the North German Radio (NDR). He has accepted invitations from major opera houses such as the Opéra National de Paris and London’s Royal Opera House, the Teatro Real in Madrid, and regularly makes guest appearances at the Salzburg Festival.

(December 2008, changes only by agreement)