Michael Wendeberg
Conductor and pianist Michael Wendeberg’s repertoire ranges from Bach via Mozart to Schoenberg, as well as to the very newest music, which is a particular focus of his work. He has been chief conductor of the Halle Opera House since the start of the 2020/21 season, having been first Kapellmeister since 2016. From 2011 to 2018 he was music director of Ensemble Contrechamps in Geneva.
He is also in demand as a guest conductor with such renowned orchestras and ensembles as the Staatskapelle Berlin, the WDR Symphony Orchestra, the Young German Philharmonic, Ensemble intercontemporain, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra in Tallinn and the Sin-fonietta Basel, appearing at the Lucerne Festival, the Munich Biennale, the Bregenz Festival, the Venice Biennale, the ECLAT Festival of New Music in Stuttgart, Klangspuren Schwaz and Wien Modern. He recently made his debut with the SWR Symphony Orchestra, as well as with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra at the Beethovenfest in Bonn and with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra at the ACHT BRÜCKEN | Festival Music for Cologne.
Projects during the forthcoming season include concerts with Ensemble Modern in Prague, a production of Tristan in Halle, the world premiere of Torsten Rasch’s Die andere Frau at the Semperoper in Dresden and Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie with the Slovenian Philharmonic in Ljubljana.
His operatic repertoire includes Handel’s Orlando, works by Mozart, Beethoven, Donizetti, Verdi, Wagner, Bizet, Puccini, Strauss and Britten, as well as several world premieres. Recent highlights include a new production of Aribert Reimann’s Die Gespenstersonate at the Berlin State Opera and Aida and a new production of Ariadne auf Naxos in Halle.
As a pianist, Michael Wendeberg has won several international competitions and has performed as a soloist with well-known orchestras under conductors such as Jonathan Nott, Marek Janowski and Daniel Barenboim. From 2000 to 2005 he was a pianist with Ensemble intercontemporain and worked intensively with Pierre Boulez. He performed the composer’s complete piano works in 2015 at Berlin State Opera and in 2018 at the Pierre Boulez Saal, followed by a recording in early 2021, which was released by the Berlin label bastille musique.
Michael Wendeberg studied the piano with Markus Stange, Bernd Glemser and Benedetto Lupo, as well as conducting in Toshiyuki Kamioka’s masterclass in Saarbrücken.