Artists

Thomas Sanderling grew up in St. Petersburg, where his father, the celebrated conductor Kurt Sanderling, was permanent conductor of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. He graduated from the Music School of the Leningrad Conservatory and went on to study conducting at the Hochschule für Musik in East Berlin, becoming Music Director of the Halle Opera at 24 years old. By his mid-twenties he was conducting in all East Germany's principal orchestras and opera houses, including the Dresden Staatskapelle and the Leipzig Gewandhaus and won the Berlin Critic's Prize for his opera performances at the Komische Oper Berlin. He worked as assistant to both Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein. In the early 1980s he became permanent guest conductor of the Deutsche Staatsoper Unter Den Linden, which led to his successful debut at the Wiener Staatsoper, conducting Die Zauberflöte. Immediately afterwards the Wiener Staatsoper invited him to conduct Le Nozze di Figaro - the first performance after the death of the great Karl Böhm. He has won many prizes and a competition and is particularly renowned for the German, Russian and English orchestral repertory.

 

Having attended Sanderling's Moscow debut, Shostakovitch asked the conductor to conduct the German first performance of his Symphonies No. 13 and 14. Sanderling's premiere CD recordings of Shostakovitch's Song Cycles for Orchestra on Deutsche Grammophon was selected as The Editor's Choice by the renowned British music magazine Gramophone. In May 2013 Thomas Sanderling conducted the world premiere of the last opera by Mieczysław Weinberg, The Idiot after the novel by Dostoyevsky, at Nationaltheater Mannheim.

 

Among the orchestras he has conducted are: BBC Scottish, Baltimore Symphony, Bayerische Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra, Bergen Philharmonic, Bournemouth Symphony, Czech Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester, Dresden Staatskapelle, Dresden Philharmonic, Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, Halle Orchestra UK, Helsinki Philharmonic, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, London Philharmonic, Montreal Symphony, NDR Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, Radio Philharmonic Hilversum, Royal Stockholm. St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Tchaikovsky Radio Symphony Moscow, Vancouver Symphony, WDR Symphony Cologne, Sydney Symphony, Novosibirsk Philharmonic.

 

He is Music Director Laureate of Osaka Symphony, which awarded him the title of Music Director Laureate for his Lifetime. With this Orchestra he won the Grand Prix of the Osaka Critics twice in three years.

 

From 2017 to 2022, Thomas Sanderling has been the Artistic Director and Chief Conductor at the Novosibirsk Philharmonic Orchestra, the position he gave up in a protest against Russian aggression in Ukraine.