BRUNO WEIL has been Music Director of California’s Carmel Bach Festival since 1992. Additionally, he is Artistic Director of the period instrument festival “Klang und Raum” (Sound and Space) in Irsee, Bavaria and Principal Guest Conductor of the Toronto-based Tafelmusik Orchestra.
Increasingly he is in demand to conduct leading international orchestras, particularly in the music of the Viennese Classical period. Born in Germany, Bruno Weil was a master student of Hans Swarowsky and Franco Ferrara. A prize winner in several international competitions, he was named General Music Director of the City of Augsburg in 1981, being Germany’s youngest General Music Director at that time. In 1989 he resigned that position, and in January 1994, he became General Music Director of the City of Duisburg, Germany, a post he relinquished at the end of the 2001/2002 season.
He has conducted such German orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Dresden Staatskapelle and Munich’s Bavarian State Orchestra. In 1988 he enjoyed a stunning success when he replaced Herbert von Karajan at the Salzburg Festival, conducting Mozart’s Don Giovanni with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
Bruno Weil has performed with leading symphony orchestras in the United States, Great Britain, France, Japan, Canada, Italy, Brazil, the Netherlands, Norway, Austria and Australia, such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, l’Orchestre National de France, l’Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and Tokyo’s NHK Symphony Orchestra. During 1997-98 he made an acclaimed debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and in February 1999, he made his successful debut with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. In recent seasons, he has successfully debuted with the San Francisco Symphony and the Indianapolis Symphony.
Numerous recordings with Tafelmusik, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra have been released on the Sony Classical label, for which Bruno Weil records exclusively. His recording of the Haydn “Paris” Symphonies won the MIDEM Cannes Classical awarded for 17th/18th-century orchestral music in 1996. Bruno Weil and Tafelmusik also were awarded the German CD Award - - Echo Klassik as Orchestra of the Year in 1996, and in 1997 he won the Echo Klassic Award as Conductor of the Year. He also has earned enthusiastic acclaim for his recordings of Schubert’s complete Masses and Symphonies Nos. 5-8.
Bruno Weil also has conducted the German Opera Berlin, Hamburg State Opera, Semper Opera Dresden and at the Teatro communale di Bologna, Italy, and most often at the Vienna State Opera. He has also appeared at England’s Glyndebourne Festival.
October 2009
