Mozart-Gala

Youngkwang Oh, Bariton (Class Prof. Snezana Stamenkovic)
Snezana Stamenkovic (Class Prof. Burkhard Fritz)
Uljana Kovalchuk, Mezzosopran (Class Prof. Stefanie Krahnenfeld)
Yeji Nam, Sopran (Class Prof. Stefanie Krahnenfeld)
Mingrui Jiang, Bass (Class Prof. Timothy Sharp)
Seohee Kim, Oboe (Class Prof. Emanuel Abbühl)
Hanqi Jiang, Horn (Class Prof. Samuel Seidenberg)
Chaejung Im, Klavier (Class Prof. Alexej Gorlatch)

Cornelius Meister has been General Music Director of the Stuttgart State Opera and State Orchestra since 2018. Prior to this, he spent eight years shaping the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra as its Principal Conductor and Artistic Director, and served as Principal Guest Conductor of the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo. His interpretations have received numerous awards, including the Gramophone Award, the International Classical Music Award, the OPUS Klassik in the ‘Conductor of the Year’ category, the Diapason d’Or and the German Record Critics’ Award. In 2020, the Stuttgart State Orchestra, under his baton, received the Innovation Prize from the German Orchestra Foundation. As a passionate advocate of cultural participation, Cornelius Meister is involved in numerous outreach projects for people of all ages – for many, this is their first encounter with a symphony orchestra. 

During the 2025/26 season in Stuttgart, he will conduct new productions of *Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg* and *Dialogues des Carmélites*, as well as revivals of *Don Giovanni* and *Madama Butterfly*. With the Stuttgart State Orchestra, he will complete the cycle of all Mahler symphonies.

Further conducting engagements this season will take him back to the Vienna State Opera and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra; as a pianist, he has been invited by the Vienna Philharmonic to perform in their chamber music series. He is strengthening his ties with orchestras in Valencia, Geneva, Strasbourg and Frankfurt, and will make his debut in Bordeaux, Warsaw and with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London.

His exceptionally wide-ranging repertoire includes works by more than 250 composers, amongst them all the symphonies by Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Sibelius and Martinů, as well as all the tone-poems by Richard Strauss. Ever since his first world premiere as a ten-year-old pianist, Cornelius Meister has championed contemporary composers and became Pierre Boulez’s assistant in 2004. Over the past twenty years, he has conducted leading symphony and radio orchestras in Europe, Asia and the USA, as well as the period instrument ensemble La Scintilla in Zurich and the Ensemble intercontemporain in Paris. His performances have included appearances at the Berlin and Paris Philharmonic Halls, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, the Kennedy Centre in Washington, the Salzburg Festival, the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, and the Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna.

Cornelius Meister’s first opera engagements took him to the Hamburg State Opera at the age of 21 and, shortly afterwards, to the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. He has spent part of each year at the Vienna State Opera since 2012; he has been conducting at La Scala in Milan since 2015 and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York since 2019. He caused an international sensation when he stepped in at the Bayreuth Festival in 2022; *Der Ring des Nibelungen* was later released on DVD by Deutsche Grammophon.

Born in Hanover in 1980, Cornelius Meister studied piano, cello, horn, conducting and philosophy in Hanover under Konrad Meister, Martin Brauß and Eiji Ōue, and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg under Dennis Russell Davies, Jorge Rotter and Karl Kamper, after attending a humanities-focused grammar school. As a pianist, he was a scholarship holder of the German National Academic Foundation and the German Music Life Foundation. During his time as General Music Director at the Heidelberg Theatre and Philharmonic Orchestra between 2005 and 2012, and later at the Musikverein in Vienna, he conducted concerts featuring works by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Grieg, Liszt, Gershwin and Arvo Pärt (Credo), amongst others, from the piano. He is currently performing a three-year song cycle in Stuttgart featuring works by Robert and Clara Schumann. Cornelius Meister is a committed advocate for the next generation. Many of his former assistants now hold leading positions themselves on the international orchestral and opera scene.