Guest Conductor
Michael Balke
Michael Balke studied conducting with Christopher Zimmerman, piano with James Tocco and chamber music with members of the LaSalle String Quartet, Tokyo String Quartet and Menahem Pressler at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and the Musikhochschule Lübeck. Initially, he pursued a distinctive chamber music career as a pianist and song accompanist before devoting himself entirely to conducting. After his debut in 2022 at the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz with »La Grande-Duchesse de Gerolstein«, he was appointed Principal Guest Conductor there from the 2023/2024 season.
In recent years he has made a name for himself internationally with a broad opera and concert repertoire. Guest conductorships have taken him to Verona (»Salome«), to the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen (»La bohème«), on various tours of Japan, e. g. to the Metropolitan Theatre in Tokyo and to the Netherlands. The Metropolitan Theatre in Tokyo and Osaka (»Die lustige Witwe«, »Madama Butterfly«), the Semperoper Dresden (»Die Zauberflöte«), the Sofia State Opera (»Don Carlo«), the Opéra national de Lorraine in Nancy (»L’heure espagnole« and »Gianni Schicchi«) and St. Gallen (including »Die Fledermaus«, »Tosca«, »Faust«, »Il trovatore«). In addition to a broad core repertoire, he also conducts rarely performed works of German Romanticism such as Franz Schreker’s »Die Gezeichneten« or Franz Schmidt’s »Notre Dame«. In 2024 he makes his debut at the Theater an der Wien with Poulenc’s »La voix humaine«.
He works with orchestras such as the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the Copenhagen Philharmonic, the Arena di Verona Orchestra, the Residentie Orkest Den Haag, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the MDR Symphony Orchestra Leipzig, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Radio Orchestra, the Munich Symphony Orchestra, the Latvian National Orchestra, the Taiwan Philharmonic, the Osaka Philharmonic and the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra Tokyo. He regularly collaborates with singers such as Ludovic Tézier, Lawrence Brownlee, Juan Diego Flórez and Marina Rebeka, as well as soloists such as Midori and Jean-Yves Thibaudet. He has conducted concerts at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Metropolitan Theatre Tokyo, the KKL Luzern, the Alte Oper Frankfurt and the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, among others.
From 2011 to 2016 he was First Kapellmeister and Deputy General Music Director at the Magdeburg Theatre. There he conducted a wide-ranging repertoire of opera productions from Mozart, Rossini and Donizetti to Verdi, Stravinsky, Korngold and Richard Strauss, as well as several symphony concerts. Highlights of this period include »Der Rosenkavalier« and a new production of »Elektra«. 2018‒2021 he was Principal Permanent Guest Conductor at the Theater St. Gallen.
In 2020 Michael Balke was nominated for both »Conductor of the Year« and »Young Artist of the Year« for the »Opus Klassik« for his complete recording of »La traviata« with Marina Rebeka, Charles Castronovo and George Petean. In 2022 he initiated and conducted the »Concert for Tomorrow«, in which Ukrainian refugees played alongside professional musicians from all the major Munich orchestras in the Isarphilharmonie Munich under the patronage of former Federal President Gauck, and which supports the reconstruction of the destroyed music school in Butscha as well as local cultural life.