Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Music Director Manfred Honeck Makes Debut at the Tanglewood Music Center This Weekend

This weekend, July 25 and 26, at the Tanglewood Music Center in the Berkshires, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Music Director Manfred Honeck will lead the Boston Symphony Orchestra in works by Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn and Mahler. The weekend marks Honeck's debut at the prestigious summer home of the Boston Symphony.

The July 25 program features pianist Paul Lewis and music by Beethoven, Mozart and Mendelssohn. Honeck also will lead soprano Camilla Tilling, mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus in Mahler's Symphony No. 2, "Resurrection."

Honeck replaces German conductor Christoph von Dohnányi, former music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, who has withdrawn due to a serious illness in his family. Honeck last led the Boston Symphony Orchestra in February 2014 in program that featured German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter. He made his debut in Boston in November 2005.

More information and tickets can be found at bso.org.

Manfred Honeck was appointed the ninth music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in January 2007, and began his tenure at the start of the 2008-2009 season. After a first extension in 2009, his contract was extended for the second time in February 2012, now through the 2019-2020 season. Honeck was born in Austria and studied music at the Academy of Music in Vienna. An accomplished violinist and violist, he spent more than 10 years as a member of the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera Orchestra. He began his career as conductor of Vienna's Jeunesse Orchestra, which he co-founded, and as assistant to Claudio Abbado at the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra in Vienna. Honeck received honorary doctorates from St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa. in 2010 and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 2014. Apart from his numerous tasks as conductor, he has been artistic director of the "International Concerts Wolfegg" in Germany for more than 15 years. Honeck served as principal guest conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra from 2008 to 2011, a position he resumed for another three years at the beginning of the 2013-2014 season. As a guest conductor, Honeck has worked with major orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Staatskapelle Dresden, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic and in the United States with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra in Washington and Boston Symphony Orchestra. Honeck's successful work with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is now captured by Reference Recordings. The first SACD - of Strauss tone poems - was released in fall 2013 and was highly praised by critics. A second SACD, Dvo?ák/Janá?ek, was released on July 8, 2014 and has already received stellar reviews. Several additional recordings have been completed and it is expected that two releases will be issued per year.

Photo Credit: Felix Broede