STEFAN SANDERLING, born in 1964, was appointed General Music Director of the Staatstheater and the Philharmonic Orchestra Mainz beginning with the 96/97 season; at the same time he became chief conductor of the Orchestre de Bretagne in Rennes, France. He leads the two orchestras with great success, as the Allgemeine Zeitung Mainz wrote after the first year of collaboration: “The Philharmonic Orchestra Mainz is seized and carried away by rousing joy and is overcome by a passionate will to play music.”

From 1990 until the end of the 1994/95 season Stefan Sanderling held the same position at the Brandenburgische Philharmonie and the Potsdam Opera, making him one of the youngest conductors to be appointed to such a position. Receiving his early artistic inspiration from his parents, Stefan Sanderling studied at the Leipzig Conservatoriurn with Kurt Masur. Later he moved to Los Angeles continuing his studies at the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute, where he won several awards. His conducting career started with the Tanglewood Music Centre Orchestra in 1989 at the Tanglewood Summer Music Festival, which enabled him to work with Bernstein, Ozawa, Slatkin, and Temirkanov.

Since his appointment in 1990 in Potsdam he has conducted many leading orchestras including the London Philharmonic, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Bournemouth Symphony, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Tivoli Orchestra, l’Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, l’Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, the Prague Symphony, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Berliner Staatskapelle, the Berliner Sinfonie-Orchester, and the Orchestra of the Beethovenhalle Bonn. He has also guest conducted the Deutsche Oper and the Komische Oper Berlin.

In 1992 Stefan Sanderling made his first recording on the Sony Classical label with the London Symphony Orchestra, followed by a recording of Tchaikovsky’s Orchestral Suites with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland (for Naxos). In the spring of 1995 two CDs with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra were released by Tring International, featuring symphonies by Haydn and Mendelssohn. Further recordings are planned.

In 1998/99 he gave celebrated concerts with the Hamburger Symphoniker and was immediately reinvited for the following season. Highlights of the past season have included debuts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl and with the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg and invitations to conduct the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Bamberg Symphony, and the Vancouver Symphony.This season, to open EXPO 2000 in Hannover, he will conduct the premiere of Volker David Kirchner’s “Gilgamesh.”

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