Wolfgang Sawallisch

Wolfgang Sawallisch was born in Munich and in 1947 launched a conducting career which would take him to the position of general music director and music director at the opera houses in Aachen, Wiesbaden and Cologne, and in 1971 at the Bavarian State Opera. Until 1992 he was the general music director at that opera house, becoming opera director there in 1982 as well. After working with concert orchestras such as the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra (where he was general music director from 1961 to 1973) and the Vienna Symphonic Orchestra (1960-1971) as well as the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva (1973-1980), Wolfgang Sawallisch was appointed music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra in the USA in 1993. As a chamber musician and accompanist of the leading singers of our times, Sawallisch also enjoyed a stellar reputation as a pianist. Awards and honours in Germany and abroad confirmed his high artistic rank and the renown he enjoyed throughout the world. Thus, he was the only honorary conductor laureate ever of the Japanese NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, as well as the recipient of the “Golden Toscanini Baton” which La Scala Milan presented him with on the occasion of his 35-year anniversary of his house debut there. Wolfgang Sawallisch was a member of the Bavarian Academy of the Arts and president of the Richard Strauss Society in Munich. In Hamburg he conducted more than 300 concerts. Under his baton in 1963, the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra became the first German orchestra to give concerts in Poland again after World War II. Further concert tours took him and the orchestra to Scandinavia, Great Britain, Italy and Switzerland. Wolfgang Sawallisch died on February 22, 2013 at the age of 89.