Markus Stenz
is the General Music Director of the City of Cologne and Gürzenich-Kapellmeister as well
as Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Principal
Guest Conductor of the Hallé Orchestra.
Studied at the School
of Music in Cologne under Volker Wangenheim and at
Tanglewood with Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa, Markus
Stenz has held the positions of Artistic Director of the
Montepulciano Festival (1989 – 1995), Principal Conductor of the London
Sinfonietta (1994 – 1998) – one of the most renowned ensembles for contemporary
music. As Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony
Orchestra (1998 – 2004) Markus Stenz
broadened his repertoire and established his career as an international
conductor.
Markus Stenz
has held the position of Principal Conductor of the Gürzenich Orchestra
(Gürzenich-Kapellmeister) since 2003. He visited China with the orchestra in early
2008 and conducted their first ever BBC Prom at the Royal Albert Hall in August
2008. In September 2010 he returned to China with the Gürzenich Orchestra and
the opera of Cologne to conduct the first ever production of Wagner’s “Der Ring
des Nibelungen” in Shanghai.
In the 2013/2014 season, his last in Cologne, he will again tour Asia with the
Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne from 16-24 February 2014, performing in major
Chinese and Taiwanese cities such as Taipei, Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou.
Towards the end of the season, on 15 June 2014, he will also conduct a Richard
Strauss gala concert in the Cologne Philharmonie to mark the 150th anniversary
of the composer's birth (11 June 1864).
He made his debut as an opera conductor
at La Fenice in Venice
with Hans Werner Henze’s Elegy for Young
Lovers. He has since conducted many
world premieres and first performances including Henze’s Das Verratene Meer in
Berlin, Venus und Adonis at the
Bavarian State Opera in Munich and L’Upupa
at the 2003 Salzburg Festival. Markus Stenz has appeared at many of the world’s
major opera houses and international festivals including La Scala in Milan, La
Monnaie in Brussels, English National Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San
Francisco Opera, Stuttgart Opera, Frankfurt Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera,
Edinburgh International Festival, the Bregenz festival (with the world premiere
of Solaris
by Detelv Glanert in July 2012) and Salzburg Festival.
His notable performances in Cologne have included
Wagner’s Ring, Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Parsifal as well as Janacek’s Jenufa
and Katya Kabanova. In the season 2012/2013
Markus Stenz will conduct in Cologne new productions
of Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten and
Richard Wagner’s Parsifal.
Markus Stenz
conducts many of the world’s leading orchestras including the Royal
Concertgebouw Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig,
Berlin Philharmonic, Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, Vienna Symphony, NHK Symphony
Orchestra Tokyo and the Symphony Orchestras
of the Bayerische Rundfunk, the HR, the WDR and the NDR. In the United States these have included
the Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Boston Symphony Orchestra.
The label OehmsClassics is currently recording a complete cycle of
Gustav Mahler's symphonies with Markus Stenz
and the Gürzenich Orchestra plus the song cycle „Des Knaben Wunderhorn“ with
Christiane Oelze (soprano) and Michael Volle (baritone). The cycle will be
published as hybrid SACD. The first release of this cycle, Mahler's 5th Symphony,
has been listed in the German Record Critics’ Award in November 2009 and was
awarded “Recording of the Year” by the music magazine Rondo in 2010. The Fourth
Symphony, the Wunderhorn songs, and the Second, Third, First and Eighth
(“Symphony of a Thousand”) symphonies have now also been issued. The recording
of Mahler’s 4th Symphony was editor’s choice in classic fM magazine
in October 2010 and was awarded the “supersonic pizzicato” in the October issue
of the magazine pizzicato as an outstanding referential recording.
In April 2013, Markus Stenz and the
Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne released a recording of Richard Strauss's popular
tone poems “Till Eulenspiegel” and “Don Quixote” on the British label Hyperion
Records with Lawrence Power (viola) and Alban Gerhardt (violoncello). The
recording was already named “Disc of the Month” (May 2013) by the BBC Music
Magazine.
Since October 2005 concerts of the
Gürzenich Orchestra are recorded live on their own label “GO live!” and made
available within 5 minutes of the end of the concert for purchase by members of
the audience. An edited version of the 3
subscription concerts is available for download from the iTunes Music
Store. Amongst the many works available
are Beethoven’s Symphonies nos. 5 and 7, Mozart’s C Minor Mass, Mahler’s
Symphonies nos. 6 and 7 and Bruckner’s Symphonies nos. 5 and 8. In January
2013, this worldwide unique project reached the milestone of 25,000 CDs sold.
(May 2013)
This biography is updated regularly. Before publication please consult about any changes or cuts.
