Hans Stadlmair

Hans Stadlmair earned his widest recognition through a forty-year tenure as artistic director of the Munich Chamber Orchestra, during which he guided the group through more than four thousand concerts and an extensive catalog of recordings. In the early twenty-first century, many listeners encountered him chiefly as the leading advocate for the symphonies of Joseph Joachim Raff; between 2005 and 2007 he committed the complete cycle of eleven symphonies, together with additional orchestral scores, to disc for the Tudor label, earning widespread praise. Although he largely steered clear of opera, his programs otherwise ranged widely, embracing repertory that extended from J.S. Bach and Biber to Bernstein and Zwilich. He appeared across Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Africa, and his recordings appeared on Deutsche Grammophon, Orfeo, Vox, and Denon.

Born on May 3, 1929, in Neuhofen an der Krems, Austria, Stadlmair pursued violin, composition, and conducting studies at the Vienna Academy of Music from 1946 to 1952, working with Clemens Krauss and Alfred Uhl. He continued private composition lessons in Stuttgart with Johann Nepomuk David until 1956. That same year he assumed the artistic directorship of the Munich Chamber Orchestra, an ensemble founded in 1950, and remained in the post until 1995. Under his leadership the orchestra maintained a balance between established works and numerous world premieres, among them Wilhelm Killmayer’s Fin al punto in 1971, while also producing more than five hundred broadcast recordings for Bavarian Radio. Alongside his regular subscription series and frequent international tours, Stadlmair composed with notable success, completing the Toccata for strings and harpsichord in 1966 and the Sinfonia serena for string orchestra in 1970.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, both the orchestra’s recordings and its radio performances brought Stadlmair growing international attention. As a composer he continued to attract interest with such scores as the 1981 Sonata da chiesa for viola and organ. In 1989 he was awarded Germany’s Order of Merit in recognition of his contributions. After relinquishing his Munich post in 1996, he remained active both on the podium and at his desk; he conducted the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra in concerts and on recordings, and he produced major new works including the orchestral tone poem Miró (2006), whose first significant performance took place in 2011 when the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra under Christian Thielemann presented it. Stadlmair died at his home in Munich on February 13, 2019.