Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

Manfred Honeck is widely regarded as one of the world's leading conductors, celebrated for his distinctive and revelatory interpretations that have garnered international acclaim. As Music Director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, where he is now in his 19th season, he continues to shape the orchestra’s artistic identity with a deep sense of purpose and passion. His tenure, recently extended through the 2032–2033 season, has seen the orchestra flourish artistically while strengthening its role as a cultural ambassador for the city of Pittsburgh. Celebrated at home and abroad, the orchestra has appeared at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, as well as at major venues throughout Europe and prestigious festivals such as the BBC Proms, Salzburg Festival, Musikfest Berlin, Lucerne Festival, Rheingau Music Festival, and Grafenegg Festival.

Manfred Honeck's acclaimed Pittsburgh tenure is reflected in an extensive discography on the Reference Recordings label, featuring works by Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Shostakovich, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, and others. These recordings have received widespread critical acclaim and multiple GRAMMY® nominations, including a win for "Best Orchestral Performance" in 2018. In August 2025, he and the orchestra released Requiem: Mozart’s Death in Words and Music, an original concept reimagining a funeral mass for Mozart, combining the composer’s Requiem with Gregorian chant, poetry, and other choral works by Mozart. 

Born in Austria, Manfred Honeck completed his musical training at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. His years as a violist with the Vienna Philharmonic and Vienna State Opera Orchestra have had a lasting influence on his work as a conductor, and his approach to interpretation is rooted in a desire to venture deep beneath the surface of the music. He began his conducting career as an assistant to Claudio Abbado and as director of the Vienna Jeunesse Orchestra. Subsequently, he was engaged by the Zurich Opera House, where he was awarded the European Conducting Prize in 1993. He has since served as one of three principal conductors of the MDR Symphony Orchestra Leipzig, as Music Director of the Norwegian National Opera, Principal Guest Conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, and Chief Conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Stockholm. In 2023, he was appointed Honorary Conductor by the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, following decades of close collaboration.  

Manfred Honeck also enjoys a distinguished profile as an opera conductor. In his four seasons as General Music Director of the Staatsoper Stuttgart, he conducted premieres of operas by Berlioz, Mozart, Poulenc, Strauss, Verdi, and Wagner. He has also appeared as a guest conductor at major institutions such as Semperoper Dresden, Komische Oper Berlin, the Royal Opera of Copenhagen, and the Salzburg Festival. In 2020, Beethoven’s anniversary year, he conducted a new staging of Fidelio (1806 version) at the Theater an der Wien. In autumn 2022, he made his much-acclaimed debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, leading a revival of Mozart’s Idomeneo. Beyond the podium, Manfred Honeck has created a series of symphonic suites, including Janáček’s Jenůfa, Strauss’s Elektra, Dvořák’s Rusalka, as well as Puccini's Turandot, which he regularly performs around the globe. The most recent arrangement, based on Strauss's Arabella, received its premiere with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 2025.

As a guest conductor, Manfred Honeck appears regularly with many of the world's leading orchestras, including the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra London, the Orchestre de Paris, and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. In the United States, he has conducted many of the nation’s most distinguished ensembles. He has also been Artistic Director of the International Wolfegg Concerts in Germany for over three decades. 

In summer 2026, he returns to the Salzburg Festival to conduct Ariadne auf Naxos with the Vienna Philharmonic. He will also lead the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra on a European festival tour, with appearances in Salzburg, Lucerne, Amsterdam, Hamburg, and at the opening concert of the season at the Vienna Konzerthaus. In the 2026/27 season, he will commemorate the 200th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s death with special programs and a new commission from Jüri Reinvere, to be presented worldwide.

Manfred Honeck holds honorary doctorates from several universities in the United States and has been awarded the honorary title of Professor by the Austrian Federal President. In 2018, the jury of the International Classical Music Awards declared him "Artist of the Year." In 2026, he received the Julio Kilenyi Medal from the American Bruckner Society, an honor bestowed on distinguished interpreters of Bruckner.

Heralded as “one of the finest organists and teachers of our day,” by Zachary
Woolfe of The New York Times, “one of the major musicians of our
time” by Alex Ross of The New Yorker, and as “America’s leading organ
performer” by The Economist, the internationally celebrated organist
Paul Jacobs combines a probing intellect and extraordinary technical
mastery with an unusually large repertoire, both old and new. He has performed
to great critical acclaim on five continents and in each of the fifty United
States. The only organist ever to have won a Grammy Award—in 2011 for
Messiaen’s towering "Livre du Saint-Sacrément"—Mr. Jacobs is an eloquent
champion of his instrument both in the United States and abroad.

Mr. Jacobs has transfixed audiences, colleagues, and critics alike with
landmark performances of the complete works for solo organ by J.S. Bach and
Messiaen. A fierce advocate of new music, Mr. Jacobs has premiered works by
Samuel Adler, Mason Bates, Michael Daugherty, Bernd Richard Deutsch, John
Harbison, Wayne Oquin, Stephen Paulus, Christopher Theofanidis, and
Christopher Rouse, among others. As a teacher, he has also been a vocal
proponent of the redeeming nature of traditional and contemporary classical
music.

No other organist is repeatedly invited as a soloist to perform with
prestigious orchestras, thus making him a pioneer in the movement for the
revival of symphonic music featuring the organ. Mr. Jacobs regularly appears
with the Chicago Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Edmonton
Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, Los Angeles
Philharmonic, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Montreal
Symphony, Nashville Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, Pacific Symphony,
Phoenix Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Toledo
Symphony, Warsaw Philharmonic, and Utah Symphony, among others. Mr. Jacobs
studied at the Curtis Institute of Music with organist John Weaver and
harpsichordist Lionel Party, and at Yale University with Thomas Murray. He
joined the faculty of The Juilliard School in 2003 and was named chairman of
the organ department in 2004, one of the youngest faculty appointees in the
school’s history. He received Juilliard’s prestigious William Schuman
Scholar’s Chair in 2007. In 2017, he received an honorary doctorate from
Washington and Jefferson College. In 2021, The American Guild of Organists
named him recipient of the International Performer of the Year Award. Mr.
Jacobs has written several articles for
The Wall Street Journal.

Photo Credit: Prescilla C. Scott