BIOGRAPHY 2021/22
Stefan Vladar looks back on a decades-long career as a pianist and conductor that has taken him to all the world's major music centers. He has been General Music Director at the Lübeck Theater since the 2019/20 season.
After Stefan Vladar won the International Beethoven Piano Competition in 1985, his career as a pianist was set. He has worked with some of the greatest conductors of his time, including Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Chailly, Christoph von Dohnányi, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Neville Marriner, Yehudi Menuhin, Seiji Ozawa, Simon Rattle, Christian Thielemann, Sandor Vegh, and Jaap van Zweden, and orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Camerata Salzburg, and NHK Symphony Orchestra, to name a few.
A record contract with the major label Sony Classical and guest appearances at important festivals such as the Salzburg Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, the Rheingau Musik Festival, the Musikfest Bremen, Ravinia Festival Chicago, Mostly Mozart Festival New York, the London Proms, and the Edinburgh Festival marked the first decades of his career.
Soon, however, the desire to step beyond the confines of the piano matured and, alongside his career as a pianist, a cautious development of a conducting career began.
After the chief position in Graz followed eleven years as chief conductor of the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, with which Stefan Vladar, also repeatedly in personal union as soloist and conductor, was active worldwide on tours and with two cycles in the Vienna Konzerthaus.
As a guest conductor during this time, he worked with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the Residentie Orkest Den Haag, the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Svetlanov Orchestra Moscow, among many others.
Since the 2019/2020 season, Stefan Vladar is now General Music Director and currently also Opera Director at Theater Lübeck, where he has already conducted operas such as Mozart's Magic Flute, Verdi's La Traviata, Dvořák's Rusalka, Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel, Poulenc's La Voix Humaine, Menotti's The Telefone, Britten's Owen Wingrave, in addition to numerous symphony concerts.
Other opera projects in the next two seasons at Theater Lübeck include Puccini's Madama Butterfly, Montemezzi's L'Amore Die Tre Re, Wagner's Lohengrin, Strauss' Salome, J. Strauss' Fledermaus, and Mozart's Figaro.
His activity as a pianist and conductor is documented on more than 40 CDs.
Stefan Vladar has been artistic director of the Neuberger Kulturtage for more than 30 years, since 1999 he is also a professor of piano at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna and holder of the Golden Decoration of Honor for Services to the Republic of Austria.
Status: August 2021
