Anne Schwanewilms, Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien & Cornelius Meister
Biography Anne Schwanewilms, Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien & Cornelius Meister
Anne Schwanewilms
is recognised as one of the leading interpreters of the works of Richard Strauss. She is a regular in opera houses like Munich, Dresden, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Vienna, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, New York or Tokyo. At the Semperoper Dresden, Anne Schwanewilms had remarkable successes as Arabella, Marschallin and Chrysothemis under the musical direction of Christian Thielemann, roles which she reprised at the Vienna National Opera . Repeatedly she appears as Elsa & Eva or Elisabeth at the Bayreuth and the Salzburg Festivals.
Her opera recordings include DVDs of „Die Gezeichneten“ (Salzburg Festival), „Die Frau ohne Schatten“ (Salzburg Festival, Christian Thielemenn, Vienna Philharmonic), „Der Rosenkavalier“ (Fabio Luisi, Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, 2007). She is renowned as one of the most important voices for Strauss’s legacy „Vier letzte Lieder“, which she has recorded officially twice. A Wagner CD with „Tristan and Isolde“, „Tannhäuser“ and the „Wesendonck-Lieder“ as well as many Lieder recordings by Liszt, Mahler, Schumann, Wolff, and Schönberg are available. Her „Wozzeck“ from Houston received the ECHO Klassik Award in 2017 and the GRAMMY Award 2018. In 2019 the DVD “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” from the Bayreuth Festival received an OPUS Klassik.
Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien
An ensemble of international renown, the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra (ORF Vienna RSO) is a paragon of Viennese orchestral tradition. Known for its exceptional programming, the orchestra combines 19th-century repertoire with contemporary works and rarely performed pieces from other periods.
All ORF Vienna RSO performances are broadcast on the radio, and the orchestra performs in two subscription series in Vienna, in the Musikverein Wien and the Wiener Konzerthaus. In addition, it regularly appears at major festivals in Austria and internationally such as the Salzburg Festival, musikprotokoll im steierischen herbst and Wien Modern. The ORF Vienna RSO enjoys a successful collaboration with the MusikTheater an der Wien, and is also equally at home in the film music genre.
The orchestra regularly tours internationally, and its discography spans a broad range of cross-genre recordings. Under the leadership of its former chief conductors, which include Milan Horvat, Leif Segerstam, Lothar Zagrosek, Pinchas Steinberg, Dennis Russell Davies, Bertrand de Billy and Cornelius Meister, the orchestra has continuously expanded its repertoire and its international reputation. Marin Alsop has served as the orchestra’s chief conductor since 2019.
Cornelius Meister
born in Hanover in 1980, became principal conductor and artistic director of the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna in September 2010.
With the RSO Vienna he has held regular concerts in the Vienna Musikverein and the Vienna Konzerthaus. Extensive tours have taken him to Japan and throughout Europe, including to Salzburg Festival. Together with the RSO Vienna, he has been present on European radio, European television, on albums and in the internet.
From 2005 to 2012, Cornelius Meister was general director of music in Heidelberg. During this time he was awarded the ‘Prize for the Best Concert Programme’ by the German Federation of Music Publishers and the ‘Young Ears’ Prize and the Prize of the German Music Council for conveying music to children and adolescents in 2007 and 2010.
In concerts, Cornelius Meister also conducts Het Concertgebouworkest Amsterdam, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra Manchester, the Washington Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, the Orchestra dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia Rome, Sveriges Radios Symfoniorkester Stockholm, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de l’Opéra national de Paris, the Ensemble intercontemporain Paris, the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin in the Berlin Philharmonic Hall, the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin, the NDR Symphony Orchestra Hamburg and the Symphony Orchestra of Bavarian Radio.
At the age of 21, Cornelius Meister held his début at Hamburg State Opera, followed by débuts at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the New National Opera Tokyo, the San Francisco Opera, the German Opera in Berlin, the Theater an der Wien, the Latvian National Opera in Riga (Der Ring des Nibelungen), the Royal Opera in Copenhagen, the Semper Opera in Dresden, Zurich Opera and Vienna State Opera.
Cornelius Meister studied piano and conducting with Konrad Meister, Martin Brauss and Eiji Oue in Hanover and with Dennis Russel Davies, Jorge Rotter and Karl Kamper at Salzburg Mozarteum. He also plays the cello and the French horn. As a pianist, he has held concerts in Europe and the USA and is a prizewinner of the German Music Competition and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival.
