DAVID STAHL | Biography

Of German descent, born in New York City, David Stahl has established himself as one of the most charismatic artistic personalities. As Music Director of the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich and the Charleston Symphony Orchestra he is among a select few who hold a Music directorship of both an opera house and a symphony orchestra on both sides of the Atlantic. Immediately after his Carnegie Hall debut at the age of 23 David Stahl was invited by Seiji Ozawa to join his masterclass at the Tanglewood Festival. There he had the privilege to meet his mentor Leonard Bernstein, who engaged him as assistant conductor to the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. After serving as Thomas Schipper's assistant at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra David Stahl was asked again by Bernstein to conduct the Broadway production and European tour of "West Side Story" and to then assist the composer when he made his legendary recording of the work.

Meanwhile David Stahl has made a great reputation for himself as a versatile and high-spirited conductor of both operatic and symphonic repertoire. Among the more than 100 orchestras on four continents he has conducted are the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Munich Philharmonic, the Radio Symphony Orchestras of Hamburg, Frankfurt and Stuttgart, the Bamberg Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Toronto Symphony and Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra. He made his European debut in 1982 in Palermo with Bellini's "I Capuleti e I Montecchi" followed by other Italian theatres. At the invitation of Giancarlo Menotti 1989 he appeared at the Festival di Due Mondi in Spoleto conducting Offenbach's "Les contes d'Hoffmann". Other guest appearances have taken him to prestigious opera houses such as the Lyric Opera of Chicago, where he conducted the memorable new production of John Harbison's "The great Gatsby", the New York City Opera, Washington Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Bavarian State Opera and Mannheim National Theatre, where after overnight success with "Tristan und Isolde" in 1994 the word was immediately spread around about his extraordinary talent. Further guest appearances have brought him to to Rome, Milan, Genova, Palermo, Dallas, Montreal and Honolulu. The list of instrumentalists he worked with contains names such as Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Yefim Bronfman, Joshua Bell, Gil Shaham, Jean Yves Thibaudet and Leonidas Kavakos, as well as many great opera singers.

Since 1984 David Stahl is Music Director of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra. Under his direction the orchestra made a splendid reputation for itself as one of the most versatile and exciting American orchestras and as one of the most important cultural institutions in the region. The orchestra's leading position is proved by regular collaboration with great artists and numerous national awards. Many musicians who were trained by David Stahl in Charleston nowadays hold outstanding positions in the most famous orchestras all over the world.

With beginning of the 1999/2000 season David Stahl took over the musical directorship of Munich's renowned Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz, where he had been principle guest conductor. During the first seasons of his tenure he raised the orchestra to highest reputation and was named "Munich's man of the year" by the daily press. As the theatre's principle conductor he led a vast number of successful productions, among them the Munich premiere of Beethoven's "Leonore". His repertoire includes numerous operas and symphonic works from classical to contemporary, in addition to works by Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, Wagner and Strauss he has also conducted many rarely performed gems such as Rossini's "Guglielmo Tell", Wagner's "Das Liebesverbot", Tchaikovskij's "Jeanne d'Arc", Hugo Wolf's "Der Corregidor" or Walter Braunfels's "Don Gil von den grünen Hosen" and operettas like "Die lustige Witwe" and a legendary concert performance of Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess". Stahl's collaboration with Claus Guth of Wagners "Das Liebesverbot" was praised as "the best new production in Munich of a work by Wagner in the past decade". A particular triumph he achieved was a concert production of Bernstein's "Candide" at the Berlin Philharmonic featuring Loriot as narrator, which was also released on the Capriccio label.