Marin Alsop has been appointed the next Chief Conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra from September 2019. She will work with the orchestra in concerts, opera productions, tours, broadcasts and recordings. Alsop has been Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra since 2007 and Principal Conductor and Music Director of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra since 2012 (a post she steps down from in 2019). Gramophone named her its Artist of the Year in 2003 and she received a Gramophone Award for her Naxos recording of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass. 

Monika Eigensperger, the orchestra’s Radio Director commented: ‘I am delighted that our orchestra will now have its first female Chief Conductor with Marin Alsop. She has been a pioneer for women and has been the first female Chief Conductor at many orchestras, not least her two current orchestras, the Baltimore and the São Paulo Symphony Orchestras. I’ve long admired Marin and I am very much looking forward to her arrival.’ Marin Alsop responded that ‘I am very excited about the prospect of collaborating with Vienna RSO. We share the same enthusiasm for expanding the repertoire and for connecting with new audiences. I am deeply moved by the fact that the players instigated my appointment and I can’t wait to start this journey with them, working closely with the Orchestra’s partners in Vienna, across Austria and beyond.’

The ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1969 (so approaches its 50th anniversary) and has had a distinguished line-up of chief conductors: Milan Horvat, Leif Segerstam, Lothar Zagrosek, Pinchas Steinberg, Dennis Russell Davies, Bertrand de Billy and, since 2010, Cornelius Meister. Its discography is extensive and includes orchestral works by Friedrich Cerha, all nine symphonies by Egon Wellesz, orchestral music by Josef Matthias Hauer and Erich Zeisl as well as more mainstream works by Anton Bruckner, Richard Strauss and Béla Bartók.