Michael Balke

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Michael Balke (born April 26, 1979 in Braunschweig ) is a German conductor .

Life

Balke started playing the piano at the age of ten. Thanks to a full scholarship, he studied piano with James Tocco, conducting with Christopher Zimmerman and chamber music with members of the LaSalle String Quartet at the College-Conservatory of Music Cincinnati (degree “summa cum laude”) and at the Lübeck University of Music .

His first engagements took him to the Nationaltheater Mannheim and the Bonn Opera . As a guest he has conducted at the Royal Theater in Copenhagen , the Metropolitan Theater in Tokyo and the Staatstheater Kassel , the Theater St. Gallen, the Teatro Filarmonico di Verona , the Opéra national de Montpellier and the Opéra national de Lorraine. He works regularly with orchestras such as the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra , Copenhagen Philharmonic, Aarhus and Aalborg Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra I Pomeriggi Musicali in Milan, Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana in Palermo, Munich Radio Orchestra and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo as well as with singers such as Marina Rebeka , Ian Bostridge , Ludovic Tézier and Lawrence Brownlee .

From 2011 to 2016 he was 1st Kapellmeister and Deputy General Music Director at the Magdeburg Theater . Here he was responsible for the musical direction of a broad repertoire from Mozart (Magic Flute, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni), Belcanto and the Italian repertoire (Barbiere di Siviglia, Maria Stuarda, Lucia di Lammermoor, Don Carlo, Verdi-Requiem), French Repertoire (Carmen, Werther) up to Richard Strauss (Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier), Erich Wolfgang Korngold (Die tote Stadt) and Igor Stravinsky (Le sacre du printemps) as well as several symphony concerts.

Since the 2018/2019 season he has been the first permanent guest conductor at the St. Gallen Theater .

In 2016 he was a member of the jury of the Felix Mendelssohn International Conducting Competition in Thessaloniki .

Michael Balke was a scholarship holder of the Richard Wagner Association Bayreuth ; Assistance to Riccardo Frizza in Verona and Florence (Maggio Musicale) as well as to Zubin Mehta in Vienna completed his training.

Discography

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Balke, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German conductor
DATE OF BIRTH April 26, 1979
PLACE OF BIRTH Braunschweig