Stefan Anton Reck

Is born on 26th April 1960 in Baden-Baden, Germany. After having won 1st International Arturo Toscanini competition for conducting in 1985, and subsequently the first prize in the International Gino Marinuzzi competition in conducting, he received a scholarship from the Tanglewood Music Festival, where he could study with Seiji Ozawa and Leonard Bernstein.

In the following years, he collaborated with some well-known Italian Orchestras (Orchestra Sinfonica di San Remo, Orchestra Regionale del Lazio). In 1999 he was then appointed as Music Director of the Teatro Massimo and held this title until 2003.

During these years, his collaboration with M° Abbado resulted in Wozzeck at Salzburger Ostfestspiele.

In 1998 M° Reck conducted his first Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Teatro Verdi in Trieste. He then began his collaboration with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, in opera productions such as “Falstaff”, and concerts during its European tour, with works of Shostakovitch, Bartók, Mahler, Scrjabin.

In the meanwhile he opened the 2001 season of Teatro Massimo in Palermo with Lulu by Alban Berg. This production has been recorded live and released in a cd by OehmsClassic. The following months counted many collaborations with Orchestre National de France, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Teatro Comunale of Bologna, and Teatro Carlo Felice in Genova. At the end of the same year, he ended his first ring in Trieste with Götterdämmerung.

In 2002, after having conducted Les Contes d’Hoffmann by Offenbach, M° Rech conducted a spectacular production, in memory of the survivors of the Holocaust “La Memoria dell’Offesa”, which featured, among others, Der kaiser von Atlantis by Viktor Ullmann and A Survivor from Warsaw by Arnold Schönberg, with Harvey Keitel. In these year an intense activity followed, both in the contemporary and traditional repertoire: Worth mentioning are Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher by Honegger in Palermo, Salomè in Genoa, Norma in Tokyo and Der Freischutz in Leipzig, and collaborations with Orchestre National de France, Orchestre Nationale de Montpellier, Orchestra of Santa Cecilia, and Maggio Musicale.

In 2004 he debuted in three major venues: Semperoper Dresden, with Aida, Bayerischer Staatsoper, with Lulu by Alban Berg and Los Angeles Opera with Le Nozze di Figaro. Moreover he conducted Daphne by Richard Strauss in the renewed Teatro La Fenice in Venice: a cd of the performance has been released by Dynamic.

In 2005 Reck was invited to conduct two new productions at the New National Theatre Tokyo, Alban Berg’s Lulu and Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. An intense concert and opera activity followed. Particularly noteworthy among all performances: the first european performance of the opera Dead Man Walking by Jake Heggie at the Semperoper Dresden, Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde at the Teatro Reggio di Torino, Der Ring des Nibelungen at the reopened Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari, Debuts at the Hamburgische Staatsoper, the Oper Frankfurt; concerts with: the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, Turin, the Orchestre National de Montpellier, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (Edinburgh Festival), the orchestrasGran Teatro la Fenice, Venice, of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra.

M°Reck is mostly renowned world-wide for his interpretations of Gustav Mahler’s work, as well as of the Second Viennese School’s (Berg, Schoenberg and Webern) and for his interest and support of contemporary music.

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