page_title: Wolfgang Sawallisch
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Wolfgang Sawallisch / Biography / Career
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: 1960: Wolfgang Sawallisch dankt dem Philharmonischen Staatsorchester Hamburg nach dem Konzert in der Hamburger Musikhalle
context_page_description: Wolfgang Sawallisch was a German conductor and pianist.
context_section_description: He began his career at the opera house in Augsburg in 1947. At first, he held the position of répétiteur and later became the principal conductor. In 1949, he was awarded the first prize at the Geneva International Music Competition where he accompanied the violinist Gerhard Seitz. In 1952–53 he was the personal assistant to Igor Markevitch at the International Summer Academy of the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria.
  He was only 30 when he conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, where Herbert von Karajan was then the principal conductor. When he debuted at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus conducting Tristan und Isolde in 1957, he was the youngest conductor ever to appear there.
  After turning down offers to join the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the New York Metropolitan Opera, Sawallisch became Principal Conductor of the Vienna Symphony in 1960, a post he held for ten years. In 1961, he started conducting the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra and did this for ten years as well. From 1970 to 1980, he was music director of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.
  From 1971 to 1992, he was Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera, and for several years from 1983, he was concurrently its general manager. For thirty years, he was closely associated with musical events in Munich. Here he conducted practically all of the major Richard Strauss operas, Salome being the sole exception. He also conducted 32 complete Richard Wagner Ring des Nibelungen cycles and is credited with nearly 1200 opera performances in the city alone.
  In 1966, Eugene Ormandy, the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1936 to 1980, had invited Sawallisch to visit him. Sawallisch subsequently made several recordings there, and in 1993 succeeded Riccardo Muti as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, where he remained until 2003. From 2003 until his death in 2013, he held the title of Conductor Laureate with the orchestra.  He was also Honorary Conductor Laureate of the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo and for over 30 years he appeared with the orchestra annually in Tokyo. He was the recipient of a Suntory Music Award in 1993.
caption: Wolfgang Sawallisch in Hamburg, 1960
exif: {}