Soon after it was founded by Eugen Jochum in 1949, the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks developed into an internationally renowned orchestra, its fame continuously expanded and fortified by its intensive touring activities. The orchestra owes its extraordinarily wide ranging repertoire and sound spectrum to the program preferences of its previous chief conductors as well as to the great flexibility and solid stylistic security of each individual musician.
Fostering new music has an especially long tradition at the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks with appearances in conjunction with the Musica Viva series, founded in 1945 by Karl Amadeus Hartmann, as one of the orchestra’s main assignments right from the start. At these concerts, Munich audiences have witnessed legendary performances of contemporary works at which the composers themselves generally stood on the podium of the orchestra. These included Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, Paul Hindemith, Pierre Boulez, as well as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Mauricio Kagel, Luciano Berio and Peter Eötvös.
Over the past few years, the Symphonieorchester has also pursued new approaches to early music and now collaborates regularly with such experts in historical performance practice as Thomas Hengelbrock, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Ton Koopman. Many renowned guest conductors, such as Clemens Krauss, Erich and Carlos Kleiber, Charles Munch, Ferenc Fricsay, Otto Klemperer, Karl Böhm, Günter Wand, Sir Georg Solti, Carlo Maria Giulini, Kurt Sanderling and Wolfgang Sawallisch have left indelible imprints on the Symphonieorchester in the past. Today Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Muti, Esa-Pekka Salonen, FranzWelser-Möst, Daniel Harding and Andris Nelsons number amongst the significant partners who regularly mount the podium in Munich. The Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks was also the only German orchestra with which Leonard Bernstein regularly collaborated for many years.
Besides the many performances and recordings in Munich and other cities in the station’s broadcast range, extensive concert tours are central components in the everyday life of the orchestra today. Tours have taken the orchestra to virtually every European country, to Asia as well as to North and South America. It makes regular appearances in New York’s Carnegie Hall and in the renowned concert halls in Japan’s musical capitals. Since 2004, the Symphonieorchester under the direction of its current Chief Conductor, Mariss Jansons, is additionally the orchestra in residence at the Easter Festival in Lucerne.
