Michael Wendeberg

Classical repertoire – from Bach to Schoenberg – comes just as naturally to Michael Wendeberg as his passion for new music. Since 2011 he has held the musical directorship of the Ensemble Contrechamps in Geneva; in 2016, he also took up the position of “Erste Kapellmeister” at the Halle Opera, where in the current season he is conducting performances of Beethoven’s Fidelio and Verdi’s Aida as well as the premiere of a ballet set to Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.

Michael Wendeberg has conducted renowned orchestras and ensembles including the Staatskapelle Berlin, Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra Ljubljana, Klangforum Wien, Remix Ensemble Porto, Musikfabrik Cologne and the Basel Sinfonietta. He has made guest appearances at the Lucerne Festival, Munich Biennale, Bregenz Festival, Venice Biennale, Eclat Festival Stuttgart and Klangspuren Schwaz, as well as at Wien Modern and Musica de hoy Madrid. He recently made his debut with the WDR Symphony Orchestra, the Ensemble Modern and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra at the Beethovenfest Bonn. 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.

Michael Wendeberg studied conducting in Toshiyuki Kamioka’s masterclass in Saarbrücken, and piano with Markus Stange, Bernd Glemser and Benedetto Lupo. 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 Traviata 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 well as the world premiere of Enno Poppe’s ArbeitNahrungWohnung in a production by Anna Viebrock in 2008 at the Munich Biennale, and Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s Des Simplicius Simplicissimus Jugend, staged by the director Thomas Fiedler in Zurich in 2010. In 2016 he led the world premiere of Sidney Corbett’s opera Die Andere at the Magdeburg Theatre.

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 until 2005 he was a member of the Ensemble intercontemporain and worked intensively with Pierre Boulez. He performed Pierre Boulez’s complete works for piano as part of the late composer’s 90^th birthday celebrations at the Staatsoper Berlin in 2015.

In the 2017/18 season, Michael Wendeberg will return to lead the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra Ljubljana, the Ensemble Modern and the WDR Symphony Orchestra as well as making his debut with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra at the Kölner Philharmonie.

2017/18 Season

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