Matthias Pintscher has quickly gained international recognition in both his professional fields, and remains exceptionally productive both as a conductor and as a composer.
Since 2024/25 he has been music director of the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra, where in his second season he has conducted programmes featuring Yefim Bronfman and George Li and the first performance of Toshio Hosokawa’s trumpet concerto Im Nebel (In the Mist).
Other highlights of 2025/26 have included conducting both the world premiere of his opera Das kalte Herz at the Berlin State Opera and the French version, Nuit sans aube, at the Opéra Comique. In the USA he has performed his works neharot with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Assonanza with the Philadelphia Orchestra, made his debut with the Oregon Symphony and renewed his residency with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Guest appearances in Europe have taken him to work with the Munich Philharmonic, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona, and to the musica viva series with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
From 2013 to 2023 he conducted the Ensemble intercontemporain, with which he performed at major festivals and international concert halls, gave numerous world premieres and made many recordings of contemporary works.
In the field of opera, he has conducted works including Wagner’s Lohengrin and Der fliegende Holländer and Beat Furrer’s Violetter Schnee at the Berlin State Opera, and Olga Neuwirth’s Orlando at the Vienna State Opera.
He has been composer in residence at the Lucerne Festival and the Salzburg Festival, among others. The Suntory Hall Summer Festival programmed a retrospective of his work. His compositions are performed by leading musicians and are often part of the schedules of major orchestras such as the London, Boston and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, the New York and Berlin Philharmonics, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Orchestre de Paris. His early operas received their premieres at the Paris Opéra and the Semperoper Dresden.
Since 2014 Matthias Pintscher has taught composition at the Juilliard School in New York. He also works regularly with the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, the Academy for Young Composers in Heidelberg, the Karajan-Akademie of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the New World Symphony in Miami.
