The Bavarian Radio Chorus enjoys the highest international reputation on account of its uniquely homogeneous sound as well as its stylistic variety in every area of the choral repertory from the medieval motet to contemporary music and from oratorios to operas.
Mariss Jansons was the principal conductor of the Chorus and Symphony Orchestra of Bavarian Radio from 2003 until his death in 2019. His successor, Simon Rattle, took over in the autumn of 2023. Howard Arman was appointed the Chorus’s artistic director in 2016 and was succeeded by Peter Dijkstra in the autumn of 2022.
The Chorus regularly gives world premieres both as part of the series musica vivaand at its own subscription concerts. Guest appearances have taken the Chorus to Asia and to the Lucerne, Baden-Baden and Salzburg Festivals. Among the leading European orchestras that value the Chorus’s work are not only the Berlin Philharmonic and the Dresden Staatskapelle but also period ensembles such as Il Giardino Armonico and the Akademie für Alte Musik in Berlin, while the conductors with whom the Chorus has performed include Herbert Blomstedt, Zubin Mehta, Christian Thielemann, Riccardo Muti, Andris Nelsons, Giovanni Antonini and Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
The Bavarian Radio Chorus has received numerous awards for its recordings, including several ECHO and OPUS Klassik awards. In 2017, the Chorus’s DVD of Bach’s St John Passion conducted by Peter Dijkstra was included in the Quarterly Critics’ Choice of the German Record Critics. In 2021 the Choir received an International Classical Music Award, the Croatian Porin Music Prize and a Diapason d’Or for its recording of Igor Kuljerić’s Croatian Glagolitic Requiem. Other recordings that have garnered a Diapason d’Or include Rachmaninoff’s The Bells, Enno Poppe’s Fett – Ich kann mich an nichts erinnern, Valentin Silvestrov’s Requiem for Larissa and Caplet’s Le miroir de Jésus.
