Dresden Philharmonic

The Dresden Philharmonic, the concert orchestra of the Saxon state capital, shapes Dresden's cultural life with its more than 80 concerts a year.

As the orchestra of the state capital Dresden, the Dresden Philharmonic looks back on a 150-year tradition. Since 1870, when Dresden received its first large concert hall, its symphony concerts have been an integral part of the city's concert life. To this day the Dresden Philharmonic is a concert orchestra with regular excursions into concertante opera and oratorio. Its home is the ultra-modern concert hall in the Kulturpalast in the heart of the old town, opened in April 2017. Since 2019, the principal conductor and artistic director of the Dresden Philharmonic has been Marek Janowski. Besides Kurt Masur, principal conductor from 1967 to 1972, his predecessors included Paul van Kempen, Carl Schuricht, Heinz Bongartz, Herbert Kegel, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and Michael Sanderling. The musical and stylistic range of the Dresden Philharmonic is broad. On the one hand, the orchestra has preserved its very own "Dresden sound" in the Romantic repertoire. On the other hand, it has developed a tonal and stylistic flexibility for the music of the Baroque and the Viennese Classical period as well as for modern works. Early on, important composers stood as conductors at its podium, from Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Dvořák through Richard Strauss to Penderecki and Holliger. To this day, premieres play an important role in the programme. Guest performances all over the world testify to the high esteem the Dresden Philharmonic enjoys in the classical music world. And the discography of the Philharmonic, grown since 1937, is impressive too.