ANDREAS WOLF

Photography: Candy Welz


After graduating from high school, Andreas Wolf initially pursued his scientific interests and studied electrical engineering, mathematics and physics, but then decided to follow his artistic inclinations and move to Munich to study at the Musikhochschule München. There he studied orchestral conducting with Prof. Hermann Michael and singing with Prof. Joseph Loibl, while receiving his pianistic training with Prof. Gitti Pirner. Sir Colin Davis, with whom he had the opportunity to work on various projects at the time, had a decisive influence on his musical development. During this time also gained further experience as a répétiteur at the Theater am Gärtnerplatz and as a chorister in the Bavarian State Opera Chorus. While still a student, he won the preliminary round of the Donatella Flick Competition and was invited to London for the final round.

After completing his Meisterklassendiplom, he then decided to pursue a career as a classical Kapellmeister and in the following years systematically developed an extensive repertoire from baroque to modern in opera and concert, which also includes film music.

He found his first position as a solo répétiteur with conducting duties at the then Schillertheater Nordrhein-Westfalen in Wuppertal. There he gained his first professional opera experience with Hänsel und Gretel and I Capuleti e i Montecchi and founded the Coll’arte Chamber Orchestra with musicians from the orchestra. Shortly afterwards he moved to the Städtische Bühnen Münster as 2nd Kapellmeister under Will Humburg, where he conducted a wide repertoire including Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel, Verdi’s Macbeth and Mozart’s Così fan tutte. His first guest conducting engagements during this time took him to Mendoza (Argentina) and Athens. This was followed by permanent engagements at the Staatstheater Kassel and the Hanover State Opera. In Kassel he received the special prize of the Fördergesellschaft Staatstheater Kassel “for his outstanding artistic achievements”. In Hanover, his musical direction of the ballet evening Molière, the premiere of Edward Rushton’s opera Die fromme Helene and Cavalli’s La Calisto attracted national attention. Unusually for a 2nd Kapellmeister at the time, he was also entrusted with works such as Turandot, Tannhäuser and The Tales of Hoffmann. Further positions then took him to the Staatstheater Saarbrücken as 1st Kapellmeister, where he conducted the German premiere of John Adams’s opera Dr. Atomic, among other works, and from 2013 to 2021 to the Theatre of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck as 1st Kapellmeister and deputy respectively acting General Music Director. In Lübeck, his productions of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth, Schreker’s Der ferne Klang and Milhaud’s Christophe Colomb also attracted great international interest and consolidated his reputation as a specialist for the music of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

He has conducted concerts throughout Europe and Asia. His celebrated debuts in 2014 at Biwako Hall in Japan, in 2016 in Daegu in South Korea and in 2019 at Teatro Pisa in Italy and at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. Since then he has become an extremely sought-after guest on the concert platform: Osaka Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Arché, Munich Symphony Orchestra, Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the National Theatre Mannheim, Badische Staatskapelle Karlsruhe and the Georgian Chamber Orchestra, and has worked with artists such as Arabella Steinbacher, Christiane Oelze, Detlev Roth and Götz Alsmann.

Since the 2021/22 season he is 1st Kapellmeister at the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar.

As an opera conductor, in addition to his musical work with soloists, chorus and orchestra, his special focus is on creating a unity of music and scenic events, also and especially including extra-musical aspects. This makes him a much sought-after partner of directors such as Jochen Biganzoli, Immo Karaman or Tilman Knabe: “Rarely does one come across a conductor who understands opera so much in the truest sense of the word as a total work of art and deals so intensively with the psychology of the characters.” (Tilman Knabe)

Reviews of his productions and concerts repeatedly speak of his dramatic approach, his stylistic diversity and his sense of sound. Among instrumentalists and singers, he has earned a reputation as a sensitive accompanist. Arabella Steinbacher once said of him: “His sensitive way of accompanying gave me every opportunity to freely shape my musical ideas.” And Christiane Oelze wrote after a joint concert with Brahms’S Requiem in the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg: “Andreas Wolf is a singer’s conductor. He feels, carries, breathes and is always concerned with the music, pursues his goal of a multi-layered, tonally balanced and touching performance with serene composure, and yet full of passion, without putting himself in the foreground […]”.

PRESS

  • “The Staatskapelle Weimar is partly to blame for the extreme bizarre fantasy that occurs in this half hour. Andreas Wolf is not only on the trail of the beautiful sound and also gives it explosiveness with an affinity for the text. The orchestra shows supple muscle fibers, velvety soft skin and tactile power of movement. Sensitivity and musical energy are in perfect synchrony.”

    RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: THE GOLDEN ROOSTER

    ROLAND H. DIPPEL - NMZ, 06.11.2022

  • ”The strengths of the production lay in the music. Conductor Andreas Wolf crystallized out of the Staatskapelle Weimar a powerful, well-balanced, very transparent sound with a fine sensus for the stylistically highly exciting score by Rimsky-Korsakov. In passages of this opera from 1906 you can already hear an objectivity à la Prokofiev or the grotesqueness of a Shostakovich alongside the late romantic, sometimes folkloric-oriental tone.”

    RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: THE GOLDEN ROOSTER

    ELISABETH RICHTER / DEUTSCHLANDFUNK, NOVEMBER 7TH, 2022

  • "Chirring flutes, lurking dangers or majestic fanfares - they all promote the experience of this world of sound, which is so wonderfully pointedly played out by the Staatskapelle Weimar under the direction of Andreas Wolf. The onomatopoeic leitmotifs, worked out with such precision and finesse, musically underline the opposite poles between elegance and the grotesque or good and evil that this fairy tale delivers.”

    RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: THE GOLDEN ROOSTER

    ELISABETH TÄNZLER – KLASSIK-BEGEISTERT.DE, NOVEMBER 6, 2022

  • "The sound that Andreas Wolf powerfully generates at the podium of the Staatskapelle Weimar is overwhelmingly large and broad."

    GLANERT: CALIGULA

    KATHARINA STORK / OPERNWELT 04/2022

  • "Composer Detlev Glanert and conductor Andreas Wolf, who spurred the Weimar Staatskapelle to the most intense emotional outbursts, hugged happily."

    GLANERT: CALIGULA

    PETER JUNGBLUT / BR24, 02/12/2022

  • "Andreas Wolf and the Staatskapelle Weimar are in top form in the purely orchestral passages and in the heartbeat of evil in the ditch."

    GLANERT: CALIGULA

    JOACHIM LANGE / MDR KULTUR, FEBRUARY 14, 2022

  • “Andreas Wolf and the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck ignite a finely listened, intonationally sublime, roaring silence of ever new scraps of memory of the repressed truth.”

    REIMANN: GHOST SONATA

    PETER KRAUSE / OPERNWELT 07/2021

  • "Wolf ensures an excellent balance between the highly committed orchestra musicians and the singers with all their intricate tasks throughout the performance. Only in this high-intensity, compelling togetherness does the artistic message come down the ramp so successfully.”

    REIMANN: GHOST SONATA

    ACHIM DOMBROWSKI / OPERA ONLINE, MAY 23, 2021

  • "Andreas Wolf and the approximately 18 members of the well-rehearsed, chamber music-like small Lübeck Philharmonic Orchestra accompanied the events on stage in an incredibly exciting way, the violins, viola, oboe, bassoon, bass clarinet, trumpet and double bass, plus harp and piano, accompanied each of these solo instruments exciting and precise the emotions, the conflicts, the drama, the atmosphere, the entire psychology of this story in a fascinating way, Andreas Wolf was also a safe and sensitive companion to the ten top-class soloists.”

    REIMANN: GHOST SONATA

    WOLFGANG SCHMITT / IOCO, JUNE 5TH, 2021

  • "The musical interpretation by Andreas Wolf and the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck supports the direction in an ideal way. Like a roaring silence of ever new rediscovered scraps of memory, the orchestra reveals to us the secrets of the repressed past with a subcutaneous effect. Thanks to Andreas Wolf's extremely knowledgeable Reimann exegesis, a maximum plasticity of expression is created, which is accentuated with equal precision by the ensemble of singers and the orchestra."

    REIMANN: GHOST SONATA

    PETER KRAUSE / CONCERTI, MAY 24TH, 2021

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