Michael Wendeberg

Classical repertoire – from Bach to Schoenberg – comes just as naturally to conductor and pianist Michael Wendeberg as his passion for new music. In 2016 he took up the position of “Erster Kapellmeister” at the Halle Opera, where in the current season he is conducting Stravinsky’s Firebird and concert performances of Tchaikovsky’s Eugen Onegin, along with an opera premiere of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

Michael Wendeberg has conducted renowned orchestras and ensembles including the Staatskapelle Berlin, Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra Ljubljana, Klangforum Wien, Remix Ensemble Porto, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Musikfabrik Cologne and the Basel Sinfonietta. He has made guest appearances at the Lucerne Festival, Munich Biennale, Bregenz Festival, Venice Biennale, Eclat Festival Stuttgart, Ultraschall Berlin Festival and Klangspuren Schwaz, as well as at Wien Modern. He made his debut with the WDR Symphony Orchestra, the Ensemble Modern and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra at the Beethovenfest Bonn and with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin at the Acht Brücken Festival Cologne. Since April 2018, after seven years as Music Director, he is first guest conductor of the Ensemble Contrechamps in Geneva.

Michael Wendeberg studied piano with Markus Stange, Bernd Glemser and Benedetto Lupo, and conducting in Toshiyuki Kamioka’s masterclass in Saarbrücken. During this time, he worked as Toshiyuki Kamioka’s assistant at the Wuppertaler Bühnen. After graduating Michael Wendeberg held positions at the Nationaltheater Mannheim and the Staatsoper Berlin, where he assisted Daniel Barenboim and guest conductors such as Pierre Boulez and Sir Simon Rattle, and was principal conductor at the Lucerne Theater.

His opera repertoire includes Bizet’s Carmen; Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Handel’s Orlando; Mozart’s ZaideClemenza di Tito and The Magic Flute; Verdi’s La Traviat, Un Ballo in Maschera and Il Trovatore; Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Don Pasquale; Rossini’s La Scala di Seta and La Cenerentola; Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel; Ponchielli’s La Gioconda; Bernstein’s West Side Story; and Puccini’s La Bohéme and Tosca. Michael Wendeberg gained national recognition early on in his career in 2006 with Michael Nyman’s The man who mistook his wife for a hat in Wuppertal, as with the world premiere of Enno Poppe’s ArbeitNahrungWohnung in 2008 in a production by Anna Viebrock at the Munich Biennale and Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s Des Simplicius Simplicissimus Jugend, staged by Thomas Fiedler in Zurich in 2010. In 2016 he led the world premiere of Sidney Corbett’s opera Die Andere at the Magdeburg Theatre. He also returned to the Staatsoper Berlin for the revival of The Magic Flute and a new production of Aribert Reimann’s Gespenstersonate in summer 2017. In Halle in past seasons he has conducted, among other works, Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, Weber’s Der Freischütz and Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine.

As a pianist, Michael Wendeberg has won several national and international piano competitions and performed as a soloist at renowned festivals and with prestigious orchestras under conductors such as Jonathan Nott, Marek Janowski and Daniel Barenboim. From 2000 to 2005 he was a member of the Ensemble intercontemporain and worked closely with Pierre Boulez. In March 2018 he appeared at the Boulez Saal with Boulez’s complete works for piano, a feat he first pulled off as part of the late composer’s 90^th birthday celebrations at the Staatsoper Berlin in 2015; a CD production of the sonatas was also recorded in 2018.

Michael Wendeberg kicks off the 2019/20 season touring with Ensemble Modern to Klangspuren Schwaz and Shanghai. He also directs concerts for the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and returns to the WDR Symphony Orchestra. He guest conducts the SWR Symphony Orchestra at the Eclat Festival Stuttgart, and at the Munich Biennale conducts a new opera by the composer Ole Hübner. In August 2020 as part of Suntory Hall’s Summer Festival he will direct the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra in a performance of a new viola concerto by Isabel Mundry for soloist Nils Mönkemeyer.

2019/20 Season

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