CLAUS PETER FLOR established his prestigious international career primarily with his interpretations of Bruckner, Mahler, Richard Strauss, Brahms and Schumann. He also has a great affinity for the works of Shostakovich, Dvorak and Suk and has recorded many of them during his tenure as Principal Conductor of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra.
Born in Leipzig in 1953, Maestro Flor began his musical career with violin tuition in Weimar and Leipzig, before focusing on conducting with Rolf Reuter and later on with both Rafael Kubelik and Kurt Sanderling. In 1984, he became General Music Director of the Konzerthausorchester-Berlin and also began regular associations with the other major German orchestras, such as the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Dresden Staatskapelle. In 1988 he made his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic, having been re-invited to conduct them twice.
Throughout his career, he has held positions with a great number of distinguished orchestras, namely the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle Orchester Zürich, and the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, where he was music director from 2008 to 2014. Prior to his position as Music Director of the Malaysian Philharmonic from 2008 to 2014, Maestro Flor held the position of Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi (2003-08) at the personal invitation of their Music Director Riccardo Chailly, where he was subsequently named Music Director from the 2017/2018 season, with a remit to developing the orchestra’s work in the central European repertoire. In the 2018/2019 season, Maestro Flor is named Guest Conductor of the Het Gelders Orkest.
In recent seasons, he has conducted highly successful and critically-acclaimed concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra (Bruckner’s Symphony No. 3) and Santa Cecilia Orchestra in Rome with an all-Mozart programme. Recent and forthcoming highlights include a continued collaboration with the Het Gelders Orkest, as well as return performances with the South Netherlands Philharmonic, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Hyogo Performing Arts Centre Orchestra in Japan and a debut with the Sofia Philharmonic.
Equally at home in the opera house, Maestro Flor has had a long relationship with the Théâtre du Capitôle in Toulouse, conducting recent, celebrated productions of Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète, d’Albert’s Tiefland, and Wagner’s Die Walküre. Past productions include a revival of Gounod’s Faust and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, and Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. Maestro Flor collaborated with multiple stage directors on these productions, such as Götz Friedrich, Joachim Herz, Harry Kupfer, Nicola Joel, Mariame Clément or Walter Suttcliffe. Other operatic engagements include a production of Wagner’s Siegfried, directed by David McVicar, with the Opéra national du Rhin in Strasbourg, Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro and Wagner’s Die Meistersinger at La Monnaie in Brussels, taking the latter on tour to Tokyo, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte for Houston Grand Opera, Weber’s Euryanthe for Netherlands Opera with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and Puccini’s La Bohème for Dallas Opera. He has also conducted a plethora of other titles with the Staatsoper Berlin, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and the Munich, Dresden, Hamburg, and Cologne state opera houses.
Maestro Flor has an extensive and diverse discography, including an acclaimed series of Mendelssohn recordings with the Bamberg Symphony, recently re-issued by Sony/BMG. His long-standing relationship with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi has also led the orchestra to become the first ever Italian orchestra to record all of Mahler’s Symphonies as live concert productions for IDAGIO. Maestro Flor has also recorded Suk’s Asrael Symphony (2009) and Dvorak’s Symphonies No.7 and 8 (2012) with the Malaysian Philharmonic for the BIS label.