Christoph Koncz
Christoph Koncz has already established himself as one of the outstanding musicians of his generation. Born in Constance in 1987 as the youngest son of an Austro-Hungarian family of musicians, he received his first violin lessons at the age of four and entered the Vienna University of Music only two years later. In addition to his violin studies, he also enrolled in the conducting class of Mark Stringer in 2005. Master classes with Daniel Barenboim, Daniel Harding and David Zinman further enriched his musical education. At the age of just nine, he received worldwide acclaim for starring as child prodigy Kaspar Weiss in the Canadian feature film The Red Violin, which won an Academy Award for Best Original Score. In 2008, at the age of only 20, he became principal 2nd violin of the Vienna Philharmonic.
His debut at the 2013 Salzburg Mozartwoche was followed by concerts at such prestigious venues as the Berlin, Cologne and Munich Philharmonie, Vienna Konzerthaus, KKL Lucerne and Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam as well as at the Salzburg Festival. Since 2019 Christoph Koncz has been Chief Conductor of the Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss am Rhein and Principal Guest Conductor of Les Musiciens du Louvre. He has been Music Director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Mulhouse since 2023/24. Much in demand as a guest conductor, he has performed worldwide with orchestras such as the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Philharmonia Orchestra London, Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal or the Hong Kong Philharmonic. Most recently, he conducted for the first time the London Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, die Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden as well as at the Prague National Theatre. He also returned to the New World Symphony Orchestra Miami and the Zurich Opera House and made further debuts with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra, Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Orquestra Sinfónica de Castilla y León, Aarhus Symphony and Tampere Philharmonic.
As a violinist, Christoph Koncz has worked since his North American debut at the age of twelve with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra under Charles Dutoit with conductors such as Sir Neville Marriner, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Gábor Takács-Nagy or Marc Minkowski. His chamber music partners include Leonidas Kavakos, Joshua Bell, Vilde Frang, Renaud Capuçon, Antoine Tamestit, Clemens Hagen, Gautier Capuçon, Andreas Ottensamer and Rudolf Buchbinder. His concert activities take him to numerous countries in Europe as well as to the Middle East, Asia, Australia, North and South America.
With Arvo Pärt's Tabula Rasa in the ballet programme Goldberg-Variationen he made his debut as a conductor at the Vienna State Opera in 2023. He will return here in the 2024/25 season for the ballet premiere of Christopher Wheeldonʼs The Winterʼs Tale.