Marek Janowski
first came to the Dresden Philharmonic as principal conductor from 2001 to 2003, during which time he already impressed with unusual and challenging programs. With the 2019/2020 concert season, he returned to the Dresden Philharmonic as principal conductor and artistic director.

Born in Warsaw in 1939, raised and educated in Germany, Marek Janowski looks back on an extensive and successful career both as an opera conductor and as artistic director of major concert orchestras. After years as assistant conductor and conductor in Aachen, Cologne, Düsseldorf and Hamburg, his artistic path led him to Freiburg i. Br. and Dortmund as GMD. Between the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, between Chicago, San Francisco, Hamburg, Vienna, Berlin and Paris, there is no opera house of world renown at which he has not been a regular guest since the late 1970s.

In concert, on which he has concentrated since the late 1990s, he continues the great German conducting tradition. From 2002 to 2016, he was principal conductor of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin (RSB). Prior to that, and partly in parallel, he served as chief conductor of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (2005-2012), the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo (2000-2005), and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France (1984-2000), among others, which he developed into France's top orchestra. He was also chief conductor of the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne for several years (1986-1990).

Marek Janowski is known worldwide as an outstanding conductor of Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Bruckner and Strauss, but also as an expert in the French repertoire. For more than 35 years, more than 50 recordings, most of which have won international awards - including several complete opera recordings and complete symphonic cycles - have contributed to making Marek Janowski's special abilities as a conductor known internationally.

A special focus for him is Richard Wagner's ten operas and music dramas, which he realized in concert with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Rundfunkchor Berlin and a phalanx of international soloists between 2010 and 2013 in the Berlin Philharmonie. All concerts were released on SACD by Pentatone in cooperation with Deutschlandradio. Marek Janowski also returned to an opera house once again for Wagner, conducting the "Ring" at the Bayreuth Festival in 2016 and 2017. He had already recorded this cycle for the disc with the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden from 1980 to 1983. For the years 2014 to 2017, he was invited by the NHK Symphony (the most important orchestra in Japan) to conduct Wagner's tetralogy in concert in Tokyo.

Under his direction, several recordings have already been made with the Dresden Philharmonic, such as the one-act operas "Cavalleria rusticana" and "Il Tabarro" by Mascagni and Puccini, as well as Beethoven's "Fidelio", also recorded by the Pentatone label.