© Martina Siebenhandl

The Tonkunstler Orchestra of Lower Austria maintains a concert repertoire from Viennese classics through the Romantic period and into the 21st century. By programming contemporary works including commissioned compositions by Kurt Schwertsik, Friedrich Cerha and Bernd Richard Deutsch, and the inclusion of genres such as jazz and world music in the „Plugged-In“series, the Tonkunstler have their finger on the pulse of the times.  In recent years the Tonkunstler have toured  to Germany, Great Britain, Spain Slovenia, the Czech Republic, the Baltic States and on several occasions to Japan. In May 2016 they completed a three week tour of Japan conducted by Music Director Yutaka Sado, plpaying fourteen concerts in the country’s most famous concert halls.

Leading musicians such as Walter Weller, Heinz Wallberg, Miltiades Caridis, Fabio Luisi, Kristjan Järvi and Andrés Orozco-Estrada have been principal conductors of the Tonkunstler. The orchestra has also received significant musical inspiration from its guest conductors. It has enjoyed friendly and often long-standing collaborations with respected conductors such as Michael Schønwandt, Jun Märkl, Jeffrey Tate, Hugh Wolff, Giovanni Antonini, Krzysztof Urbanski, Dmitrij Kitajenko and John Storgårds.

Soloists who have collaborated with the orchestra include Renée Fleming, Joyce DiDonato, Angelika Kirchschlager, Lisa Batiashvili, Sol Gabetta and Michael Schade amongst many others as well as the pianists Rudolf Buchbinder, Fazil Say, Kit Armstrong and Lang Lang. Violin virtuosos Christian Tetzlaff, Augustin Hadelich, Arabella Steinbacher and Julia Fischer, as well as the oboist Albrecht Mayer and harpist Xavier de Maistre have also made appearances with the Tonkunstler.

In 2003 the Tonkunstler were the first Austrian orchestra to establish a department for music education. The «Tonspiele» are now one of Austria’s most extensive programmes of musical education. Plentiful CD recordings reflect the orchestra’s artistic profile. On its newly-founded independent label the Tonkunstler and Yutaka Sado have recently released recordings of works by Richard Strauss, Joseph Haydn and Anton Bruckner.

© Peter Rigaud

In recent seasons Yutaka Sado has made his debuts with the Berlin Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian State Orchestra, the WDR Symphony Orchestra, NDR Hamburg and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Forthcoming engagements will lead him for the first time to the MDR Symphony Orchestra in Leipzig and the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. The long-time assistant to Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa has won some of the leading conducting prizes including the Premier Grand Prix at the 39^th International Conducting Competition in Besançon and the Grand Prix du Concours International L. Bernstein Jerusalem. His close collaboration with Bernstein led to his appointment as Conductor in Residence at the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo. Yutaka Sado has been Artistic Director of the Hyogo Performing Arts Centre (PAC) and Principal Conductor of the PAC Orchestra since 2005. This concert hall has become one of Japan’s leading concert venues with 70,000 annual subscribers.

Yutaka Sado’s fame in Japan is enormous, thanks in no small part to a weekly TV programme on classical music that he presented and conducted. Outside Japan his career first blossomed in France where he became Chief Conductor of the Orchestre des Concerts Lamoureux in Paris in 1993. In France the charismatic conductor has for many years been one of the most important guest conductors with the Orchestre de Paris, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and other leading French orchestras. In Germany he has developed a close collaboration with the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin, with whom he toured Japan in 2011. Sado has also conducted the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra Munich, the Staatskapelle Dresden, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Radio Symphony Orchestras in Cologne (WDR), Stuttgart and Freiburg (SWR) and the Gürzenich Orchestra, the Frankfurt Museum Orchestra, the Bamberg and Düsseldorfer Symphony Orchestras as well as the Dresden and Hamburg Philharmonics. In Italy he conducts the Orchestra di Santa Cecilia Rom, RAI Torino, the Verdi Symphony Orchestra of Milan and the orchestra of the Maggio Musicale in Florence.

He made his Italian operatic debut in Turin in 2010 at the Teatro Regio with Britten’s «Peter Grimes» in a production by Willy Decker. In Switzerland he has conducted the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and the Orchestre de la Suisse-Romande, and in Great Britain both the BBC Philharmonic and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. CD recordings by Yutaka Sado and the German Syphony Orchestra Berlin include versions of Tchaikovsky’s  Symphony No. 5 und Rachmaninov’ Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsuji. With the Orchestre des Concerts Lamoureux he has recorded works by Jacques Ibert, Maurice Ravel, Emanuel Chabrier and Eric Satie. He has also made three CD recordings with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France: of the French repertoire (Dukas, Bizet, Offenbach), works by Leonard Bernstein («Chichester Psalms» and the Symphony No. 3 «Kaddish» with Karita Mattila and narrated by Yehudi Menuhin) and works by Berlioz, Wagner and Liszt. He has also recorded a CD of operatic arias with Karita Mattila and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

© Martina Siebenhandl

The orchestra’s varied history has been significantly influenced by the political and social events and upheavals of the 20th century.

In 1907 the Vienna Tonkunstler Orchestra consisting of 83 musicians gave its first concert at the Vienna Musikverein, with such notable conductors as one of Dvořák’s students, Oskar Nedbal, Hans Pfitzner and Bernhard Stavenhagen, a student of Franz Liszt.

In 1913 the Tonkunstler gave the first performance of Arnold Schönberg’s «Gurre-Lieder» under the direction of Franz Schreker. Its Principal Conductor from 1919 to 1923 was Wilhelm Furtwängler. In the years that followed, the orchestra worked with conductors such as Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, Felix Weingartner, Hans Knappertsbusch and Hermann Abendroth.

Since 1945 the Tonkunstler have been the state symphony orchestra of Lower Austria since 1945. Year after year they have fulfilled the cultural, artistic and educational responsibilities of this position with their extensive range of concerts at numerous venues across the region, including the New Year’s concert series, through music outreach projects and their commitment to contemporary music in Lower Austria. In 2003 the Tonkunstler were the first Austrian orchestra to establish a department for music education. The «Tonspiele» are now one of Austria’s most extensive programmes of musical education.