Michael Schneider

Michael Schneider has been artistic director of the Salzburg Bach Choir since 2025. Already in his first seasons he has shaped the profile of this renowned ensemble and collaborated with outstanding conductors such as Kirill Petrenko, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Emmanuelle Haïm, Roberto González-Monjas and Ivor Bolton. Alongside his much acclaimed choral preparation, he has conducted the Salzburg Bach Choir in numerous concerts both in Austria and abroad, including at the Heidelberg Spring Festival, the Tyrolean Festival Erl and the Mozartfest Würzburg.

At the start of the 2026/27 season, he will also assume the position of chorus director at the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen.

Michael Schneider was born in Salzburg in 1990 and received his first piano and singing lessons at the Mozarteum University in his home city. He continued his training at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, where he studied piano and orchestral and choral conducting.

As a guest conductor, he has conducted ensembles such as the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Gdánsk Philharmonic Orchestra, the Symphony Orchestra Vorarlberg, the Salzburg Baroque Orchestra and the Wiener Singverein. Concerts that he has conducted have been broadcast by Ö1 und ORF III, among others. In 2017 he rehearsed the chorus for a tour of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to China with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Philippe Jordan.

Michael Schneider is founder and artistic director of the ensemble Interpunkt, with which he has participated in many acclaimed projects, including at the Wien Modern Festival, with the Tonkunstler Orchestra of Lower Austria and at the Vienna Musikverein under Ivor Bolton. He also directs the Collegium Vocale Salzburg.

Michael Schneider’s long association with the Salzburg Bach Choir reaches back to the years 2013 to 2016, when he was assistant to the chorus director. In this role he worked on projects including the world premiere of Thomas Adès’s opera The Exterminating Angel at the Salzburg Festival. At the Salzburg Easter Festival he rehearsed the Bach Choir for Ponchielli’s La Gioconda in 2024, for Musorgsky’s Khovanshchina in 2025 and for Mahler’s Eighth Symphony in 2026.

Since 2020 Michael Schneider has taught conducting at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.