Johannes Klumpp

"Johannes Klumpp makes music full of agility in fine gradations. (...) The magic of uninhibited, flowing music-making emerges, which forgets itself and casts a breathless spell over the listener." WIESBADENER TAGEBLATT

As a creative partner to the orchestra and an outstanding communicator, Johannes Klumpp develops programmes from the late baroque to the classical modern that thrill audiences. In his third season as artistic director of the Heidelberg Symphony Orchestra, he is continuing the complete recording of all Haydn symphonies with the orchestra, on which the orchestra's founder Thomas Fey had already worked with great success. During the current season, the conductor can also be heard regularly at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden: A joint symphony concert will be followed by three opera premieres with Lehar's The Merry Widow and Janáček's From the House of the Dead and The Makropoulos Affair, and Johannes Klumpp will also conduct the revival of Strauss' Rosenkavalier in Wiesbaden. He has also been invited back to the MDR Symphonieorchester and the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester.

Johannes Klumpp has been working as principal conductor and artistic director of the Folkwang Chamber Orchestra Essen since the 2013/2014 season. Not least because of the celebrated recordings of the symphonies and concertos of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, he has been able to raise the profile of the ensemble enormously, which serves as a stepping stone into professional life for excellent young musicians. In addition, he designs innovative programme formats as part of the ExtraKlang series - held at the Zollverein World Heritage Site - and has cooperated with well-known personalities such as the actress Martina Gedeck, the composer and pianist Hauschka and the late publicist Roger Willemsen. 

A busy concert schedule also takes him to renowned orchestras, including the MDR Symphony Orchestra, the Stuttgart State Orchestra, the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, the Dresden Festival Orchestra, the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra, the Gulbenkian Orchestra Lisbon, the Staatskapelle Weimar, the Filharmonia Opolska, the Munich Symphony Orchestra, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra and the Kammerakademie Potsdam.

In opera, too, Johannes Klumpp - praised by the press as a "singer-conductor par exellence" - is held in high esteem. Klumpp feels particularly close to the works of Mozart; among others, his Figaro at the Tiroler Landestheater Innsbruck received great acclaim. At the same time, his diverse musical theatre repertoire, developed throughout his time as Principal Conductor of the Musiktheater im Revier in Gelsenkirchen and as a guest conductor at the Gärtnerplatztheater in Munich and the Nuremberg Opera has already included works ranging from Händel's Flavio and Monteverdi's Lamenti to Mozart's Die Zauberflöte and Così fan tutte to Verdi's Aida. His repertoire also includes Puccini's Manon Lescaut, Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel, Britten's Gloriana, Nicolai's The Merry Wives of Windsor and Gounod's Faust.

To encourage dialogue with the audience, Johannes Klumpp regularly uses the moderated concert form. He is convinced: "In this day and age, we have to show people the way to what we love so much. Lead them over the threshold." He also succeeded in doing this extremely convincingly in Saxony-Anhalt, where for ten years as artistic director of the SommerMusikAkademie Schloss Hundisburg, he and his team facilitated outstanding musical experiences far from the cultural metropolises. 

Born in Stuttgart, he studied viola and learned his craft with Nicolás Pasquet and Gunter Kahlert in Weimar. In 2007 he attracted attention with a 2nd place at the conducting competition in Besançon. This was followed by awards at the German University Competition "in memoriam Herbert von Karajan", where he was honoured with both first and a special prize, and in 2011 at the German Conducting Prize. Master classes with renowned conductors such as Kurt Masur, Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Michail Jurowski rounded off his artistic training, during which Johannes Klumpp was promoted by the German Music Council as the "Maestro of Tomorrow".

2022/23 season

This biography is to be reproduced without any changes, omissions or additions, unless expressly authorised by the artist management.