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.

Renaissance woman Hélène Grimaud is not just a deeply passionate and committed musical artist whose pianistic accomplishments play a central role in her life. Her multiple talents extend far beyond the instrument she plays with such poetic expression and technical control: Grimaud has established herself as a wildlife conservationist, a human rights activist and a writer, her deep dedication to her musical career reflected in and amplified by the scope and depth of her environmental, literary and artistic interests.

She has been an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist since 2002. Her recordings have been critically acclaimed and awarded numerous accolades, among them the Cannes Classical Recording of the Year, Choc du Monde de la musique, Diapason d’or, Grand Prix du disque, Record Academy Prize (Tokyo), Midem Classic Award and the Echo Klassik Award.

Grimaud’s early recordings include Credo and Reflection (both of which feature a number of thematically linked works); a Chopin and Rachmaninov Sonatas disc; a Bartók CD on which she plays the Third Piano Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra and Pierre Boulez; a Beethoven disc with the Staatskapelle Dresden and Vladimir Jurowski which was chosen as one of history’s greatest classical music albums in the iTunes “Classical Essentials” series; a selection of Bach’s solo and concerto works, in which she directed the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen from the piano; and a DVD release of Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Claudio Abbado.

In 2010 Grimaud recorded the solo recital album Resonances, showcasing music by Mozart, Berg, Liszt and Bartók. This was followed in 2011 by a disc featuring her readings of Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos. 19 and 23 as well as a collaboration with singer Mojca Erdmann in the same composer’s Ch’io mi scordi di te?. Her next release, Duo, recorded with cellist Sol Gabetta, won the 2013 Echo Klassik Award for “chamber recording of the year”, and her album of the two Brahms piano concertos, the First recorded with Andris Nelsons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Second with Nelsons and the Vienna Philharmonic, appeared in 2013. This was followed by Water (2016), a live recording of performances from tears become… streams become…, the critically- acclaimed large-scale immersive installation at New York’s Park Avenue Armory created by Turner Prize-winning artist Douglas Gordon in collaboration with Grimaud. Water features works by nine composers: Berio, Takemitsu, Fauré, Ravel, Albéniz, Liszt, Janáček, Debussy and Nitin Sawhney. 2017 then saw the release of Perspectives, a two-disc personal selection of highlights from her DG catalogue, including two “encores” – Brahms’s Waltz in A flat and Sgambati’s arrangement of Gluck’s “Dance of the Blessed Spirits” – previously unreleased on CD/via streaming.

After this, Grimaud moved on to Silvestrov’s vocal music. Silent Songs features her live performance with baritone Konstantin Krimmel of a selection of pieces from the composer’s monumental song cycle of the same name. It was released in March 2023 to critical acclaim: “Konstantin Krimmel and Hélène Grimaud deserve the highest praise for their poised and unaffected account of this beautiful, dreamlike music” (BBC Music Magazine).

The pianist’s latest project focuses on her long relationship with the German Romantics, and on the ties that bound both Robert Schumann and his protégé Brahms to pianist-composer Clara Schumann. Grimaud has revisited Robert Schumann’s Kreisleriana, and pairs it on her new album with Brahms’s Op. 117 Intermezzi and his Op. 32 set of songs, in which she is again joined by Konstantin Krimmel. For Clara will be released in September 2023.

Forthcoming highlights of Grimaud’s schedule include performances of Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra across Europe (October/November) and with the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg (October) as part of her season-long residency at the Philharmonie Luxembourg; Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 with The Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet- Séguin (December); recitals in Boston, Atlanta, Chicago and Toronto (January/February); and performances with Camerata Salzburg (with whom she embarks on a new artistic partnership in the 2023-24 season) of the Schumann Piano Concerto at the Vienna Konzerthaus, Dresden Music Festival, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival (together with Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto) and Évian Festival (May/June). Following on from the success of Silent Songs, she and Konstantin Krimmel will perform songs from Silvestrov’s cycle in Luxembourg and Dortmund (June).

Hélène Grimaud was born in 1969 in Aix-en-Provence and began her piano studies at the local conservatory with Jacqueline Courtin before going on to work with Pierre Barbizet in Marseille. She was accepted into the Paris Conservatoire at just 13 and won first prize in piano performance a mere three years later. She continued to study with György Sándor and Leon Fleisher until, in 1987, she gave her well-received debut recital in Tokyo. That same year, renowned conductor Daniel Barenboim invited her to perform with the Orchestre de Paris: this marked the launch of Grimaud’s musical career, characterised ever since by concerts with most of the world’s major orchestras and many celebrated conductors.

Between her debut in 1995 with the Berliner Philharmoniker under Claudio Abbado and her first performance with the New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur in 1999 – just two of many notable musical milestones – Grimaud made a wholly different kind of debut: in upper New York State she established the Wolf Conservation Center. Her love for the endangered species was sparked by a chance encounter with a wolf in northern Florida; this led to her determination to open an environmental education centre. “To be involved in direct conservation and being able to put animals back where they belong,” she says, “there’s just nothing more fulfilling.” But Grimaud’s engagement doesn’t end there: she is also a member of the organisation Musicians for Human Rights, a worldwide network of musicians and people working in the field of music to promote a culture of human rights and social change.

For a number of years she also found time to pursue a writing career, publishing three books that have appeared in various languages. Her first, Variations Sauvages, appeared in 2003. It was followed in 2005 by Leçons particulières, and in 2013 by Retour à Salem, both semi-autobiographical novels.

It is, however, through her thoughtful and tenderly expressive music-making that Hélène Grimaud most deeply touches the emotions of audiences. Fortunately, they have been able to enjoy her concerts worldwide, thanks to the extensive tours she undertakes as a soloist and recitalist. A committed chamber musician, she has also performed at the most prestigious festivals and cultural events with a wide range of musical collaborators, including Sol Gabetta, Rolando Villazón, Jan Vogler, Truls Mørk, Clemens Hagen, Gidon Kremer, Gil Shaham and the Capuçon brothers.

Her prodigious contribution to and impact on the world of classical music were recognised by the French government when she was admitted into the Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur (France’s highest decoration) at the rank of Chevalier (Knight).

Pittsburgh Public Theater was chartered in 1974 and opened in September 1975 after a decade in which the city had become known nationally as an unenthusiastic theater town. Once a major stop on the pre-Broadway circuit, there was no longer a suitable venue for road shows after the city lost the beautiful "Old" Nixon Theatre. Even worse, a similar fate was anticipated for the "New" Nixon. The Pittsburgh Playhouse, once the flagship of American community theaters, had also closed, leaving only smaller community theaters, colleges and universities to keep the art form alive.

The broad-based efforts of many private and public individuals throughout the community contributed to the successful launch of Pittsburgh Public Theater. Commitments to ensure full funding of the first season were made before it's opening. A strong volunteer organization was developed, community outreach programs were created, and 7,100 subscriptions sold (twice as many subscribers as the Theater Guild had in its heyday) before The Public opened in 1975.

The inaugural season was an enormous success, bringing great audience and critical acclaim for the three productions. The Glass Menagerie, directed by Ben Shaktman, was reviewed by Pittsburgh Press drama critic Ed Blank with the headline "Pittsburgh Public Theater triumphs with Glass Menagerie." One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (one year before the film version), directed by John Going and starring Tom Atkins, was described by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette drama critic George Anderson as "thunderously engrossing theater." Twelfth Night, directed by Ben Shaktman, was praised by Ed Blank as "a Shakespearean production capable of turning heads and changing minds," with a special mention of Leonard Nimoy's Malvolio as "one of the funniest stage performances in memory." As stated by Martin Gottfried, author of A Theater Divided, a highly praised survey of American theater, "The Pittsburgh Public Theater has gotten off to an excellent start — as excellent a start as I've yet to see a regional theater get off to." With strong ticket sales and many sold-out performances, the season expanded to four productions the following year, which quickly grew to six in the following years.

The Public enjoyed 24 years on the North Side before moving to its current home — the O'Reilly Theater — in the heart of the Downtown Cultural District. The new performing space, which was built by The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, opened with the world premiere of August Wilson's King Hedley II in December 1999.

The Public has a proud tradition of producing new work. In addition to the world premiere of August Wilson's King Hedley II, another of his masterworks, Jitney, received its professional premiere at Pittsburgh Public Theater. The pre-Broadway run of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Alan Ayckbourn's By Jeeves was staged at The Public before moving to New York's Helen Hayes Theatre.

Some of the plays which received their world premieres on The Public's stage include Horton Foote's The Habitation of Dragons; Jonathon Bolt and Thomas Tierney's Eleanor; Michael Cristofer's Amazing Grace; Mark Hampton and Barbara J. Zitwer's Paper Doll; Rob Zellers and Gene Collier's The Chief; Naomi Wallace's Things of Dry Hours; Mark Hampton and Michael Sharp's The Secret Letters of Jackie and Marilyn; and Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's brand-new musical, The Glorious Ones.