Stanislav Kochanovsky & Jörg Widmann

Stanislav Kochanovsky has been the chief conductor of the NDR Radiophilharmonie
Hannover since the start of the 2024/2025 season. His first season with the orchestra was
already full of special concerts and artistic highlights. These include the charity concert by
the President of the Federal Republic of Germany in November 2024, the sing-along concert
for Kirchentag 2025 in Hanover, the tour to the “Festival Internacional de música de
Canarias” on the Canary Islands and concerts with Gil Shaham in Hanover and France. This
season also saw the start of the collaboration with the harmonia mundi label. Their first joint
CD was a recording of Tchaikovsky’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 and works by Rimsky-Korsakov
and Tcherepnin.
Stanislav Kochanovsky is one of the most intriguing artists alive. He is deeply passionate
about symphonic and operatic music alike. In recent years, Kochanovsky has taken the
international music scenes in both genres by storm. Invitations to conduct have seen him
take the podium with the likes of such prestigious ensembles as the Royal Concertgebouw
Orchestra, the Wiener Symphoniker, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre de
Paris, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the
NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonie and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra.
Throughout his career, he has also collaborated with the main Russian orchestras such as
the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Russian National Orchestra and the Moscow Philharmonic
Orchestra. He’s collaborated closely with soloists across the globe, including Leonidas
Kavakos, Vilde Frang, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Mikhail Pletnev, Nikolai Lugansky, Kirill
Gerstein, Truls Mørk, and Matthias Goerne. This past May, Stanislav Kochanovsky made his
U.S. debut conducting the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in
Washington DC for which he was lauded by audiences and critics alike. In July, he will direct
the Cleveland Orchestra for the first time.
Stanislav Kochanovsky’s opera work is in equally high demand, with more than thirty operas
in his repertoire. These include some of the greatest works by Mozart, Donizetti, Gounod,
Saint-Saëns, Tschaikowsky, Mussorgsky, Verdi, Puccini, and Wagner. Recent musical-threater
engagements have taken him to the Opernhaus Zürich, the Dutch National Opera
Amsterdam, the Mariinsky Theatre, as well as to the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Since
making his debut at the Verbier Festival in 2017, Kochanovsky has returned for regular guest
appearances to conduct works of both symphony and opera.
In addition to his dedication to the classical repertoire cannon, Stanislav Kochanovsky has
proven himself a fervent promoter not only of contemporary music but of staging works
audiences are rarely exposed to as well. In recent seasons, Kochanovsky has conducted
extraordinary repertoire such as Ligeti’s Requiem, Scriabin-Nemtin’s Mysterium, Kodály’s
Psalmus Hungaricus, Shostakovich’s unfinished opera The Gambler, Myaskovsky’s Silence,
and Weinberg’s Symphony No.21 Kaddish. Additionally, he has staged contemporary pieces
by composers, including Brett Dean, Osvaldo Golijov, Anna Thorvaldsdóttir, Tobias Broström,
and Pēteris Vasks.
Stanislav Kochanovsky was born in St. Petersburg in 1981. His musical training began at the
city’s famed Glinka Choir Choral College boys’ choir. Kochanovsky studied choral conducting,
organ, and opera-symphonic conducting at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where he
graduated with honors. When he was only 25-years-old, Stanislav Kochanovsky joined the
Mikhailovsky Theatre in St.Petersburg, where he would go on to conduct over sixty operas
and ballets. He also served as principal conductor of the State Safonov Philharmonic
Orchestra between 2010 and 2015

Jörg Widmann is considered one of the most versatile and intriguing artists of his generation.

From 2026, he will be the new Artistic Director of the Lucerne Festival Academy, which has been a cornerstone of contemporary music within the festival since its founding by Pierre Boulez in 2004. During the 2025/26 season, he will be performing worldwide in all his roles as a clarinettist, conductor and composer, including his third season as Principal Guest Conductor of the NDR Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. He is also Associate Conductor of the Munich Chamber Orchestra and Artistic Partner of Sinfonietta Riga.

Following notable appearances with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orquesta y Coro Nacionales de España, a key focus of the 2025/26 season will take him to the USA: for the first time, he will conduct the Cleveland Orchestra in performances of his own music and that of Mendelssohn. He will also take the podium with the Atlanta and Detroit symphony orchestras. Further guest conducting engagements will take him to the Oslo Philharmonic, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest, the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, the Budapest Festival Orchestra and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra. In his capacity as Associate Conductor, he will be touring South America with the Munich Chamber Orchestra.

A highlight in February 2026 will be Olga Neuwirth’s clarinet concerto *Zones of Blue*, dedicated to Jörg Widmann, which he will premiere with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle. Another highlight will be the world premiere of Jörg Widmann’s new composition *Jupiter-Etüde* as part of the Mozart Festival in Würzburg in June 2026.

Long-standing chamber music partners such as Isabelle Faust, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Carolin Widmann, the Hagen Quartet, the Signum Quartet and the Amabile Quartet will perform alongside Jörg Widmann at venues including the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Philharmonie in Essen, the Muziekgebouw, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Auditorio Nacional de Música, Toppan Hall and the Boulez Saal.

At the 2015 Donaueschingen Music Festival, Widmann premiered Mark Andre’s Clarinet Concerto. Other clarinet concertos dedicated to him or written for him include Wolfgang Rihm’s Music for Clarinet and Orchestra (1999) and Aribert Reimann’s Cantus (2006).

Conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Daniel Harding, Kent Nagano, Franz Welser-Möst, Christian Thielemann, Iván Fischer, Andris Nelsons and Sir Simon Rattle regularly perform his music. Orchestras such as the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, the London Symphony Orchestra and many others have premiered his music and regularly include it in their concert repertoire. In the 2023/24 season, Jörg Widmann was Composer in Residence with the Berlin Philharmonic. The residency culminated in the world premiere of his Horn Concerto, featuring Stefan Dohr as soloist and the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.

Studied under Gerd Starke in Munich and Charles Neidich at the Juilliard School in New York, Jörg Widmann was himself a professor of clarinet and composition at the Freiburg University of Music. Since 2017, Widmann has held a chair in composition at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin. In recognition of his services to music, he was appointed a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in June 2024. He was a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, the Free Academy of Arts in Hamburg (2007) and the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz (2016); in February 2023, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Limerick, Ireland. In July 2025, Jörg Widmann was elected President of the International Max Reger Society.

Jörg Widmann studied composition with Kay Westermann, Wilfried Hiller, Hans Werner Henze and Wolfgang Rihm. His work has received numerous awards, most recently the prestigious Bach Prize from the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, as well as the Music Prize of the City of Munich.