Manfred Honeck

Manfred Honeck, conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra since 2008, saw his podium career accelerate rapidly through the 1990s once his background as an orchestral musician supplied an insider perspective on the art. With that ensemble he has launched an intensive recording initiative.

Born September 17, 1958, in Nenzing, Austria, Honeck completed his musical education at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna. After graduation he joined the Vienna State Opera Orchestra as a violist, thereby qualifying for membership in the Vienna Philharmonic, which accepted him. His earliest conducting assignments came with the Vienna Youth Orchestra. In 1987 Claudio Abbado engaged Honeck as his assistant with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra in Vienna. The decisive breakthrough occurred at the Gustav Mahler Festival in Kassel in 1989, when he led the centenary performance of the world premiere of Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D major ("Titan").

Honeck made his first operatic appearance at the Vienna Volksoper in 1989, directing Johann Strauss Jr.'s Die Fledermaus. That same season he also conducted Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro and Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia for the company. In 1990 the Vienna Philharmonic invited him to lead its gala concert marking the 75th anniversary of the Wiener Konzerthaus dedication. Additional opportunities soon followed, including engagements with the Berlin State Orchestra, the Berlin State Opera at the Unter den Linden Theater, and the Hamburg State Opera. At the last of these he conducted the official Mahler production of Mozart's Così fan tutte. A five-year appointment as First Kapellmeister at the Zürich Opera House began in 1991; there he added Massenet's Hérodiade and Giordano's Fedora and Andrea Chénier to his credits while also leading the premiere of Herbert Willi's Schlafes Bruder. An early career highlight arrived with his Salzburg debut, conducting the Vienna Philharmonic during the 1994 Mozart Week.

Honeck became chief conductor of the MDR Symphony Orchestra of Leipzig in 1996. The next year he was named music director of the Norwegian National Opera, and in 1998 he received the title of principal guest conductor with the Oslo Philharmonic. During the 1990s and early 2000s he recorded with several ensembles, among them the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra; the latter partnership produced a 2006 CPO release of Allan Pettersson's Symphony No. 12. He served as chief conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra from 2000 to 2006 and as music director of the Staatsoper Stuttgart from 2007 to 2011.

Honeck's tenure with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, which began in 2008, has been extended through the mid-2020s. Recordings with the orchestra have appeared on Exton Classics and the group's own Reference Recordings label. He has maintained a concentration on late Romantic repertoire, issuing several Mahler symphonies, Bruckner's Symphony No. 4 on Reference in 2015, and suites from Richard Strauss' Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier on the same imprint the following year. In 2017 Reference Recordings issued the Honeck/Pittsburgh account of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47, paired with Barber's Adagio for Strings. The 2019 album Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 with the Pittsburgh Symphony earned a Grammy Award nomination. Honeck and the orchestra sustained their activity through the COVID-19 pandemic, releasing recordings of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 in 2021 and Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 ("Pastoral") in 2022 on Reference Recordings, along with other works.