Cornelius Meister

Conductor

Cornelius Meister, born in Hannover in 1980, was appointed Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2010. Each season he directs the orchestra in concert series both in Vienna’s prestigious Musikverein and the Konzerthaus, for the Wiener Festwochen with live TV-broadcasts, at the Salzburg festival as well as recordings and tours throughout Europe and Asia.

At the end of the 2011/12 season, Cornelius Meister will complete an impressive seven years as Music Director of the City of Heidelberg, of both the Heidelberg Philharmonic Orchestra and the Opera House. In 2007, he was honoured by the German Association of Music Publishing for the best German concert programming of a season (in Heidelberg). He furthermore was acknowledged for his extensive development achieved in education programmes.

Cornelius Meister is guest conductor with such orchestras as the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra Manchester, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre de l’Opéra national de Paris and in the USA with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the latter resulting in an immediate reinvitation. In his native Germany, he appears with the DSO Berlin at the Berlin Philharmonie, the Radio-Sinfonie Orchestra Berlin, the NDR Symphony Orchestra Hamburg as well as the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the latter replacing Seiji Ozawa.

In the early years of this international career, Cornelius Meister has made important opera house debuts: at the age of 21 he gave his debut at the Hamburg opera, followed by the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the New National Theatre Tokyo, the San Francisco opera, the Deutsche Oper Berlin and last season at the Royal Opera House Copenhagen with Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. In 2007, he conducted a fantastically received new production of Wagner’s “Siegfried” at the Latvian National Opera where he will return in 2013, to lead their new production of Wagner’s complete “Ring” cycle.

In 2011/12 Meister will also return to the Theater an der Wien with a new production of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw.  He gives his debut at the Semperoper in Dresden with Berg’s Lulu. Furthermore, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the Wiener Staatsoper have extended debut invitations to the young conductor.

Cornelius Meister studied piano and conducting at the Hannover University with Konrad Meister, Martin Brauß and Eiji Oue and at the Salzburg Mozarteum with Dennis Russell Davies and Karl Kamper.  As a pianist, he has given concerts in Europe and the USA. He is prize-winner of the “Deutsche Musikwettbewerb” as well as the “Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival”.

SEASON 2011/2012