Biography

Music Director of the Orquestra de Valencia and Artistic Advisor of the Palau de la Musica Valencia from the 2022/23 season, the distinguished German conductor Alexander Liebreich has also been President of the Richard-Strauss-Gesellschaft and Artistic Director of the Richard Strauss Festival in Garmisch-Partenkirchen since 2018, following Wolfgang Sawallisch and Brigitte Fassbaender in this position. He has previously held the positions of Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra (2018-2022), Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra (NOSPR) (2012-2019 season, and Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Munich Chamber Orchestra (2006–2016).

In 2018 he took over as Artistic Director of the Richard Strauss Festival in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, opening the first edition in June 2018 with Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and the Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks. Next to that he was elected head of the Richard-Strauss-Society, following Wolfgang Sawallisch and Brigitte Fassbaender in this position. Alexander continues as the Artistic Director until 2023.

He was Artistic Director of the festival “Katowice Kultura Natura” from 2015 – 2018. During that time some of Europe’s finest orchestras, ensembles and soloists have been invited to the Festival, including the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich and Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Leif Ove Ansdnes, András Schiff, Bejun Mehta, Stefano Bollani, Artemis Quartett and Quatuor Ebène.

He held the position of Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Munich Chamber Orchestra from 2006 – 2016. Their first collaborative CD, featuring works by Joseph Haydn and Isang Yun, was released to great critical acclaim in January 2008. The ECM Classics release of Tigran Mansurian’s “Requiem“, with RIAS Kammerchor received a nomination for a Grammy Award in 2018 and won the ICMA Award 2018 in the category “Contemporary Music”.

His extensive career has seen him as guest conductor with many prestigious orchestras including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin, Munich Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, Dresden Philharmonic, St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Luxembourg, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra and Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich. Recent and upcoming highlights include debuts at the Grafenegg Festival, George Enescu Festival, La Folle Journée in Warsaw, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie and Gulbenkian Orchestra Lisbon, He regularly performs with distinguished soloists such as Lisa Batiashvili, Veronika Eberle, Krystian Zimerman, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Gautier Capuçon, Alban Gerhardt, Leila Josefowicz, and Isabelle Faust.

The 23/24 season sees him bringing signature symphonic and choral repertoire to the Orquestra de Valencia, including Schubert’s 9th, Schumann’s 3rd and Mahler’s 5th symphonies, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Haydn’s Die Schopfung, Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe, and a concert performance of Strauss’s Salome. He also opens the season of the MDR Sinfonieorchester in Leipzig, and returns to the Taipei Symphony, Antwerp Symphony, Nagoya Symphony,  and the Japan and Brno Philharmonic Orchestras, in repertoire ranging from John Adams, Beethoven and Janacek to Gubaidulina and Weinberg.

Alongside his concerts and opera performances, Liebreich has established a reputation for producing innovative projects. In 2011 he became the first European Artistic Director of the Tongyeong International Music Festival in South Korea, one of the biggest and most important festivals in Asia. With the goal of encouraging intercultural encounters, he implemented the “east-west-residence-programme”, inviting guest artists like Heiner Goebbels, Unsuk Chin, Martin Grubinger, Toshio Hosokawa and Beat Furrer to South Korea. As Artistic Director of the festival “Katowice Kultura Natura”, from 2015– 018, he invited some of Europe’s finest orchestras, ensembles and soloists, including the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra and Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. In 2014 he inaugurated the new “NOSPR” concert hall in Katowice, the orchestra’s home, with a performance including Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 with Krystian Zimerman.

Liebreich’s wide-ranging discography includes works from Bach, Mozart and Mendelssohn, to Isang Yun and Toshio Hosokawa. His collaboration with the Polish National Radio Symphony and the label Accentus Music produced a series of acclaimed recordings Lutosławski, Szymanowski, Penderecki and Zemlinsky (the third release becoming winner of the International Classical Music Awards 2017 “Best Collection” category), and with the Munich Chamber Orchestra his ECM Classics release of Tigran Mansurian’s “Requiem“, with RIAS Kammerchor, received a nomination for a Grammy Award in 2018 and won the ICMA Award 2018 in the category “Contemporary Music”.  His most recent release is a disc of the harpsichord concertos of Martinů, Krása and Kalabis with Mahan Esfahani and the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Alexander Liebreich, was born in Regensburg and studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München and the Salzburg Mozarteum and gained much of his early artistic experience with both Michael Gielen and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. He was significantly influenced by his mentor Claudio Abbado, who invited him to join and assist productions at Salzburger Osterfestspiele with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and in Bolzano with the Gustav-Mahler-Jugend Orchestra. In October 2016 the Bavarian Ministry of Education, Culture, Science, and Art announced that Alexander Liebreich is the recipient of the Bavarian Culture Prize Special Award.