The Dresden Philharmonie is the orchestra of Dresden, the State Capital of Saxony. Since 2011, Michael Sanderling has been its Principal Conductor, following Kurt Masur, Marek Janowski, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and others in this position. The Dresden Philharmonie continues the tradition of the Ratsmusik, the city council’s musicians who were first mentioned in the fifteenth Century and had grown into an orchestra by the early nineteenth Century. Since 1870, the year when Dresden got its first great concert hall, the Philharmonic’s symphony concerts have been an established part of the city’s concert life. The Dresden Philharmonie has ever since been a concert orchestra with regulär ventures into the fields of opera concertante and oratorios. It is housed in the Kulturpalast in the middle of the Old Town. The listed shell of the building will be built-in with a new, ultra-modern concert hall by 2017. Until then, the Philharmonie performs concerts for large orchestra mainly in the Albertinum and the Schauspielhaus. The Dresden Philharmonie offers great musical and stylistic variety. On the one hand, the orchestra has been able to retain its very own “German” sound in the Romantic repertoire. On the other hand, it has developed flexibility of sound and style for Baroque and Viennese Classic music as well as for modern works. Renowned conductors and composers headed the orchestra early on, from Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak and Richard Strauss to Erich Kleiber and Knappertsbusch, Previn and Marriner, to Andris Nelsons and Kristjan Järvi. Premieres remain an important part of the orchestra’s programme today. The Dresden Philharmonie joins the Dresden Kreuzchor for the Christmas and Easter Bach performances at the Kreuzkirche. For the great choral symphonies, the orchestra can rely on the Dresden Philharmonie Choir as an excellent partner. Another important tradition is chamber music and chamber symphonies performed by the Dresden Philharmonie Chamber Orchestra, all of whose musicians come from the Dresden Philharmonie. Not only does the Dresden Philharmonie enjoy an extraordinarily large number of regulär subscribers; with its family programmes, film music concerts etc. it does a great job in introducing classical music to new groups of listeners. Guest performances all over the world are testimony to the high renown the Dresden Philharmonie enjoys in the world of classical music. Another remarkable aspect is the Philharmonic’s impressive discography, which started to develop in 1937. Currently, a new cycle is being recorded for the Sony Classical label, with Principal Conductor Michael Sanderling pairing a selection of Dmitri Shostakovich’s symphonies with Beethoven’s symphonies.
