Münchner Philharmoniker

Despite a shadowed history, the Münchner Philharmoniker, also known as the Munich Philharmonic, faces forward with considerable promise. Its Nazi-era ties during World War II left lasting stains, and the early 1980s brought leadership from the famously unpredictable Sergiu Celibidache. Although its origins extend to the start of the nineteenth century, the ensemble truly took shape in 1893 when a private patron established the Kaim Orchestra. World War I nearly dissolved the group, yet afterward Munich’s municipal authorities assumed control and renamed it the Münchner Philharmoniker. In the 1920s conductor Hans Pfitzner strengthened its standing, but the 1930s saw the adoption of a swastika emblem and self-promotion as the orchestra of fascism. Postwar reconstruction again proved necessary, aided by figures such as Rudolf Kempe who elevated its global profile. A defining moment arrived in 1979 when Celibidache assumed the music directorship; his tenure produced fresh, meticulously prepared interpretations while also triggering a costly, ultimately victorious sex-discrimination suit brought by American trombonist Abbie Conant after she secured her position through blind audition. Celibidache further refused to document performances, convinced that live concerts resisted replication. Following his death, that policy gradually shifted under a series of prominent successors in the twenty-first century, among them James Levine, Christian Thielemann, Lorin Maazel, and, beginning in 2014, Valery Gergiev. Gergiev has issued multiple recordings and positioned the orchestra as a vehicle for his approach to expansive late-Romantic orchestral writing, notably Mahler’s symphonies. The pair has also launched a survey of Anton Bruckner’s symphonies, releasing the Symphony No. 1 in C minor in 2018 on the ensemble’s proprietary label. Since 1985 the Münchner Philharmoniker has called Munich’s Gasteig Culture Center its home.