Michael Sanderling

Michael Sanderling has been Music Director of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra since and has sought to develop the late-Romantic repertoire, including works by such composers as Bruckner, Mahler, and Strauss. Born in 1967 in Berlin to the double bassist Barbara Sanderling and the conductor Kurt Sanderling, he began his career as an internationally successful cellist. Sanderling launched his conducting career in 2000. His first leadership position was as Artistic Director of the Kammerakademie Potsdam, from 2006 to 2010. For eight years, from 2011 to 2019, Sanderling then helmed the Dresden Philharmonic. He has appeared as a guest conductor with the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Orchestre de Paris, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and the NHK Symphony Orchestra. In the 2023-24 season, he made his debuts with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. He has toured Asia, South America, and Germany with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra. Their performance of Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony to William Kentridge’s animated film Oh To Believe in Another World, which was presented at the KKL Lucerne, the Vienna Konzerthaus, and the Pompeii Theatrum Mundi Festival, attracted particular attention. Sanderling is also dedicated to music theater. For his account of Prokofiev’s War and Peace at Cologne Opera, he was named Conductor of the Year by Opernwelt magazine in 2011. Sanderling’s discography includes complete cycles of the Beethoven and Shostakovich symphonies with the Dresden Philharmonic. Together with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, he released a complete Brahms cycle in 2023 and the piano concertos of Schumann and Grieg, with soloist Elisabeth Leonskaja, in 2024. A passionate advocate for the younger generation, he teaches at the Frankfurt Music Academy and regularly works with the German National Youth Orchestra, the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, and the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra.

Lucerne Festival (IMF) debut as a cellist on 26 August 1989 with the Trio Ex Aequo in a program of works by Beethoven, Paul, and Shostakovich. He first ­appeared here as a conductor in summer 2021

July 2024