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Florian Krumpöck

Internationally celebrated as both a soloist and conductor, Florian Krumpöck has more than proven his outstanding capability on the international concert scene. Appointed as one of the youngest music directors in German history in 2011, Krumpöck characteristically masters enormous amounts of opera and concert literature as well as piano repertoire, and particularly enthrals his audiences with his double function as a soloist and conductor.

The son of a cellist and an art historian, Krumpöck can count Rudolf Buchbinder and Gerhard Oppitz among his teachers, as well as one of the most distinguished female pianists of our time, Elisabeth Leonskaja. Pronounced by none other than Daniel Barenboim after hearing him play as being a “simply wonderful pianist”, Krumpöck was well on the way to a promising international career.

Receiving outstanding reviews for his debut in the Zurich Tonhalle with the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra under Vladimir Fedoseyev, Krumpöck was subsequently invited to play at other major European music centres such as Vienna, Salzburg, Munich and Zurich, as well as further afield in Israel, the USA, China and South Korea. Critically acclaimed solo recitals at international festivals such as the SalzburgFestival, the Salzburg EasterFestival, the BregenzFestival, the Bad Kissingen Summer Music Festival, the Bachfest in Leipzig, the MecklenburgVorpommern Music Festival and the ViennaKlangbogen, all helped to cement his future career as a soloist. Furthermore, at an early stage Sir Peter Ustinov had presented the young musician to a wider audience.

Florian Krumpöck makes regular appearances as a soloist at great concert halls such as Vienna’s Musikverein and Konzerthaus, the Zurich Tonhalle, the Herkulessaal in Munich, and the Meistersingerhalle in Nürnberg. Other appearances include the great concert hall of the Moscow Conservatoire. In the course of his career, he has played several complete cycles of Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas. Upon the advice of his mentor Daniel Barenboim, Krumpöck expanded his repertoire to include numerous symphonic works and operas and began to work increasingly on conducting.

In 2006 Krumpöck gained the opportunity to stand in at the Jerusalem Symphony for the first time as a conductor. The performance was an international sensation and he was subsequently appointed principal conductor of the Baden Sinfonietta.

2007 saw Krumpöck conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra with great success as a part of a New Year’s concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington. He was then employed by the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, where he notably worked with the former director of the Vienna Burgtheater, Matthias Hartmann.

Krumpöck was appointed in 2011 as music director for concerts and opera at the Rostock Volkstheater and as principal conductor of the Norddeutsche Philharmonie. In this role, and as one of the youngest music directors in Germany, Krumpöck directed numerous music theatre premieres and symphony concerts which included a Mahler cycle, a Beethoven marathon which involved the nine symphonies being played on four consecutive days, and several other concerts as both soloist and conductor.

2012 saw Krumpöck lead the Lichtenstein Symphony Orchestra as artistic director and principal conductor. In the following three years he was the driving force behind the highly successful artistic reorganisation of the orchestra, which thus developed into the most important cultural ambassador for the country. Collaborations with some of the most important soloists of our time marked the artistic ascent of the orchestra, as did a concert series that was completely sold out to subscribers alone.

Despite the Norddeutsche Philharmonie requesting to extend Krumpöck’s contract at the end of his tenure, he opted instead for purely freelance work. This has included his debut at the Royal Opera in Copenhagen conducting the Royal Danish Orchestra, with two inaugural open-air concerts and a production of Der Rosenkavalier, produced by Marco Arturo Marelli.

Florian Krumpöck has been a guest conductor for many of the most celebrated orchestras in the world, conducting the Vienna Symphony Orchestra in the golden hall of the Vienna Musikverein, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Lisbon’s Gulbenkian Orchestra, the Copenhagen Royal Danish Orchestra, the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, the Linz Bruckner Orchestra, the Staatskapelle of Halle, the Nürnberg Staatsphilharmonie,the philharmonic orchestras of Kiel, Würzburg, Hagen, Oldenburg, Bremerhaven, Neubrandenburg and Trier, the Brandenburg Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Chamber Orchestra, and numerous orchestras in China and South Korea. In 2012 he was also the premiere conductor for Rigoletto at the opera festival in Gars am Kamp, Austria.

Last season, in guest appearances, Florian Krumpöck conducted the Norddeutsche Philharmonie in the Grosses Festspielhaus in Salzburg and the Lichtenstein Symphony Orchestra in a live concert broadcast by Bavarian Radio in Munich. He also conducted the traditional New Year’s concert at the Salzburg Festspielhaus, with a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

The foundation for what was to become a close co-operation with UNIVERSAL was laid when he won critical acclaim at the Klassik am Dom Gala in July 2015, with soloists Angelika Kirchschlager and Michael Schade, conducting the Linz Bruckner Orchestra.
He has formed a close working relationship with Angelika Kirchschlager, the two of whom perform many lieder recitals together.
Numerous CD recordings as a pianist and conductor (the most recent being Dvořák’s Piano Concerto with the Nürnberg Staatsphilharmonie under Markus Bosch, chamber music by Karl Weigl with David Frühwirth and Benedict Klöckner, and Schubert’s Winterreise with Wolfgang Bankl), radio broadcasts and several television features, all document the varied work of the artist. For the current Blüthner concert series in Vienna, he is for the sixth time taking charge of music management. Since summer 2015, Florian Krumpöck has been the director of Kultur.Sommer.Semmering.

Discography