Johannes Klumpp

"Johannes Klumpp makes music full of agility in fine nuances. (...) The result is the magic of uninhibited, flowing music-making that forgets itself and casts a breathless spell over the listener." WIESBADENER TAGEBLATT

As a creative partner of the orchestra and an outstanding communicator, Johannes Klumpp develops programmes ranging from late baroque to classical modernism that thrill audiences.

In his fourth season as artistic director of the Heidelberg Symphony Orchestra, he is about to complete the recording of all of Joseph Haydn's symphonies. He is also devoting himself to a Brahms-Schubert specialisation with this orchestra. Following his great successes at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden last season – including Lehar's Die lustige Witwe, Janáček's Aus einem Totenhaus and Die Sache Makropoulos as well as Strauss' Rosenkavalier – he can be heard there again from March 2024 with a new production of Weber's Freischütz. He started the season there in October 2023 with a symphony concert featuring Bach, Zimmermann and Bruckner's Ninth.

A debut was also on his agenda at the start of the current season: a Beethoven programme with the Robert Schumann Philharmonie Chemnitz. Before his debut with the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover in June 2024 concludes the season, he has a number of re-invitations lined up, including with the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen, the Philharmonie Südwestfalen and appearances on the podium of the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra.

Johannes Klumpp has been Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Folkwang Chamber Orchestra Essen since 2013. Not least thanks to the acclaimed recordings of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's symphonies and concertos, he has been able to raise the ensemble's profile enormously. The series will be expanded into a complete recording of all Mozart symphonies. He also created innovative programme formats as part of the "ExtraKlang" series – held at the Zeche Zollverein World Heritage Site – and collaborated with well-known personalities such as the actress Martina Gedeck, the composer and pianist Hauschka and the late publicist Roger Willemsen. To promote dialogue with the audience, Johannes Klumpp regularly uses the moderated concert format, and not only in Essen.

His busy concert schedule also takes him to renowned orchestras, including the MDR Symphony Orchestra, the Stuttgart State Orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra, the Gulbenkian Orchestra Lisbon, the Staatskapelle Weimar, the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra.

Johannes Klumpp – praised by the press as a "singer-conductor par excellence" – is also highly regarded in opera. Klumpp feels particularly close to Mozart's work; his Figaro at the Tiroler Landestheater Innsbruck, among others, received great acclaim, and Klumpp also conducted Mozart's Magic Flute and Cosi fan tutte on several occasions. At the same time, his diverse music theatre repertoire has included works from Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel and Nicolai's Merry Wives of Windsor to Verdi's Aida and Puccini's Manon Lescaut, Britten's Gloriana and Feldman's Neither since his time as Principal Conductor of the Musiktheater im Revier Gelsenkirchen and as a guest conductor at various opera houses.

Born in Stuttgart, he studied viola and learnt his craft with Nicolás Pasquet and Gunter Kahlert in Weimar. He attracted attention early on with competition successes in Besançon, at the German University Competition "in memoriam Herbert von Karajan" and at the German Conducting Prize. Masterclasses with renowned conductors such as Reinhard Goebel, Kurt Masur, Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Michail Jurowski rounded off his artistic training.