Markus Stenz Conductor

Markus Stenz studied music in Cologne with Volker Wangenheim and at Tanglewood with Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa. 

He has held numerous positions at the head of international orchestras: Principal Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra (2015-2019), Conductor of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra (2016-2020), Music Director of the City of Cologne and Kapellmeister of the Gurzenich Orchestra (2003-2014), Principal Guest Conductor of the Halle Orchestra (2010-2014). He made his debut as an opera conductor in 1988 at La Fenice in Venice. After a concert devoted to Mozart and Strauss in 2021, he is conducting concerts there this season including works by Mozart, Schumann and Wagner, and will return next year with Berg's Wozzeck.

He has conducted numerous premieres on major international stages, including Henze's Das Verratene Meer, Venus and Adonis and L'Upupa und der Triumph der Sohnesliebe, Wolfgang Rihm's Die Eroberung von Mexico, Detlev Glanert's Caligula, Dai Fujikura's Solaris, György Kurtág's Fin de partie. His other productions include the Ring Cycle, Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Jenůfa, Kátia Kabanová, Don Giovanni and Love and other Demons by Peter Eötvös. 

In 2021 he conducted Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Deutsche Oper Berlin; he will conduct Les Contes d'Hoffmann and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in the coming seasons. He has conducted major symphonic ensembles such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Berlin, Munich and London Philharmonic Orchestras, the NHK in Tokyo, the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.