Chief Conductor and Artistic Director: Orquesta de València
Designated Chief Conductor: Taipei Symphony Orchestra
Chairman Richard-Strauss Gesellschaft
Biography
Music Director of the Orquesta de València and Artistic Advisor of the Palau de la Música València since the 2022/23 season, the distinguished German conductor Alexander Liebreich begins his appointment as Chief Conductor of the Taipei Symphony Orchestra from 2026. 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 seasons), and Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Munich Chamber Orchestra (2006–2016). A German conductor with Moravian-Jewish roots, Liebreich has also been Chairman of the Richard-Strauss-Gesellschaft since 2018, following Wolfgang Sawallisch and Brigitte Fassbaender in this position.
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, Bamberg Symphony, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, Grafenegg Festival, George Enescu Festival, La Folle Journée Warsaw, the Gulbenkian Orchestra of Lisbon, Dresden Philharmonic, St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Luxembourg, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra and Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich. 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.
On the opera stage his repertoire has included Enescu’s Oedipe and Otmar Schoeck’s Penthisilea for Oper Frankfurt, Massenet’s Cendrillon at the Grand-Théâtre du Luxembourg, and Madama Butterfly for the Netherlands Reisopera, and he has led concert performances of major repertoire from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Gluck’s Orfeo ed Eurydice to Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress and Strauss’s Salome and Elektra.
The 25/26 season sees him bringing to Valencia an impressive range of repertoire, including Mozart’s Requiem, Mahler’s 3rd and 4th symphonies, and orchestral works from Soler and Brahms to Korngold, Lutoslawski and Dutilleux, and making guest appearances at the Musikverein in Vienna and the Auditorio Nacional de Madrid.
In partnership with Accentus Music and ARTE TV, he and the Orquesta de València continue a sequence of audio and video recordings, and following a concert film on Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, and contributions to a documentary ‘Arnold Schönberg – der rastlose Visionär’ for the composer’s 100th anniversary, their recording of Orff’s Carmina Burana will be released in November 2025.
Recent and upcoming highlights include his debuts with the Staatskapelle Weimar and the Orchestra of Teatro Colon Buenos Aires, opening the season of the MDR Sinfonieorchester in Leipzig, and returns to the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, the Antwerp Symphony and Brno Philharmonic Orchestras, with repertoire ranging from John Adams, Beethoven and Janacek, to Gubaidulina and Weinberg. He appeared as guest conductor with the Orchestre de l’Auvergne, and the George Enescu Philharmonic, and led a tour of Hong Kong and Korea with the Sinfonia Varsovia. This season he also returns to the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra for their 90th anniversary Jubilee Concert and guest-conducts the Japan Philharmonic and Basque National (Euskadiko) Orchestras.
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– 2018, 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. Alexander Liebreich was awarded the prestigious Bavarian Culture Special Prize 2016 by the Bavarian Ministry of Education, Culture, Science, and Art.