Ingo Metzmacher

Conductor, pianist, and festival director Ingo Metzmacher maintains an extensive repertory yet stands out chiefly for his advocacy of opera and orchestral scores from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. During the opening years of the new millennium he released four installments of the series Who's Afraid of 20th Century Music?, and he has also conducted numerous world premieres of significant contemporary operas and orchestral pieces. In addition, Metzmacher frequently appears as collaborative pianist with leading German vocalists. His discography surpasses fifty albums and features the 2024 release Igor Strawinski: Symphonien für Blasinstrumente; Agon; Variationen 'Aldous Huxley in Memoriam'; Symphonie in C.

Born in Hannover, West Germany, on November 10, 1957, Metzmacher grew up as the son of cellist Rudolf Metzmacher. He began piano studies in his hometown, where he likewise pursued theory and conducting before continuing his education in Cologne and Salzburg. In 1980 he joined Frankfurt’s Ensemble Modern as pianist and assumed its conducting duties in 1985. Wider notice followed his 1988 direction of Franz Schreker’s Der ferne Klang at Brussels’ Théâtre de la Monnaie. His recording debut came in 1994 when he led Ensemble Modern in Hans Werner Henze’s Requiem; that same year he also directed the Munich Philharmonic in a revised account of Henze’s Symphony No. 6.

Appointed music director of both the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra and the Hamburg Opera in 1997, Metzmacher earned recognition for productions of Wagner’s Lohengrin, Weber’s Der Freischütz, and Berg’s Wozzeck, the last of which he recorded for EMI in 1999. He left Hamburg in 2005 to head De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam, a post he held until 2008, then moved to the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under a contract scheduled to run through 2011, although he resigned early over budgetary conflicts. Guest engagements have kept him active, including the 2009 Salzburg Festival premiere of Luigi Nono’s Al gran sole carico d’amore and the 2010 premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s Dionysos.

Metzmacher has explored a broad spectrum of twentieth-century instrumental music stretching from Charles Ives through Schoenberg, Webern, and John Cage, while devoting special attention to Karl Amadeus Hartmann, whose complete symphonies he has recorded. He has appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra. As pianist he has partnered with baritone Matthias Goerne, soprano Christine Schäfer, and bass-baritone Christian Gerhaher. By the mid-2020s his catalog exceeded fifty recordings, among them a 2024 collection of late Stravinsky works with the SWR Symphonieorchester. He has also written the books Keine Angst vor neuen Töne and Vorhang Auf!