The Sanderling conducting family is known from Kurt Sanderling’s numerous recordings for ETERNA and EMI in the recent past. His son THOMAS SANDERLING (1942) has made a successful career in Russia and Germany. He graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory in the violin class of Mikhail Weimann and in composition from Nikolai Rabinovich. At the age of 24 he was appointed conductor of the Halle Opera. He subsequently conducted successfully the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig and the Komische Oper in Berlin. His recording of Shostakovich’s Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti (orchestral version) opened up opportunities for collaboration with Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein in several projects. At the beginning of the 1980s he was appointed permanent guest conductor of the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin and at the same time made his debut at the Vienna State Opera with Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. He has won many awards – including the OPUS KLASSIK Award for his records of Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky with the London Symphony Orchestra.
Sanderling has conducted some of the finest symphony and opera ensembles, including the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Prague Philharmonic, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and the London, Manchester, and Oslo Philharmonic Orchestras, Pittsburgh, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, the St Petersburg Philharmonic, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the State Opera Theatres of Bayreuth and Hamburg, the Mariinsky Theatre, the Finnish National Opera and the Teatro La Fenice in Venice.
He has made many award-winning recordings for various companies including Deutsche Grammophon, BIS and Chandos. His recording for Sony Classical (of works of Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev) was named CD of the Month in several specialist magazines in Tokyo. His recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic became a Critical Survey reference recording and won an award at Cannes. The Integral of the Brahms symphonies with the London Philharmonic under his baton was praised by the music critics.
He performed and recorded much of Shostakovich’s work. His debut with the Moscow State Orchestra at the invitation of Yevgeny Svetlanov marked the beginning of a long friendship with the composer, which later developed into a collaboration with his widow Irina Shostakovich. Sanderling received the scores of the 13th and 14th Symphonies from the composer for their premiere performance in Germany. He also conducted Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 and the world premiere of Six Romances in Verse from English Poets (first orchestration for full orchestra, Op. 62a) in an original version personally provided to him by Irina Shostakovich. He restored from manuscript three fragments from the period of the Nose opera and performed them for the first time.
He also premiered Mieczysław Weinberg’s Requiem with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2013 he conducted the world premiere of his latest opera, Idiot, at the Mannheim National Theatre and the Russian premiere at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg (2015/2016 season). In the spring of 2023 he staged the Austrian premiere of the very same opera at the Theater an der Wien and received the high acclaim from the audience and international critics.
He performed the German premieres of Weinberg’s Symphony No. 21 and Symphony No. 7 with the Stuttgart State Orchestra.
Thomas Sanderling was Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of the Novosibirsk Philharmonic Orchestra from 2017 to 2022. He has ongoing engagements with the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Berlin Konzerthaus. In the spring of 2022 he conducts the Dortmund Philharmonic, the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, the Saarländisches Staatsorchester, and the Staatskapelle Halle. He conducted Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13 at a special concert with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre. He has a long-standing collaboration with the Osaka Symphony Orchestra. He recently recorded American music with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London.
In May 2024, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Bruckner, Sanderling conducted his Symphony No. 7 in Saarbrücken with the State Orchestra. It is to be performed with the Osaka Symphony Orchestra. Also in May 2024, the musician was elected president of the jury of the Dimitris Mitropoulos International Competition for Conducting.
His programme in 2025 is again connected with Shostakovich’s music and its presentation in Budapest, Paris, Parma, Zagreb, Beijing and Shanghai as a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the composer’s demise. On the same occasion, a CD with the Dresden Staatskapelle is expected to be released by Deutsche Grammophon.
