Alexandra Knight
Artist Manager
+44 (0) 20 3350 1108
alexandra@knightclassical.com
Johan Pieters
Associate Artist Manager
+44 (0) 20 3880 9657
johan@knightclassical.com
Ángela Lorenzo
Assistant Artist Manager
angela@knightclassical.com
Hugh Wolff
“So absolute was his control that he held the whole auditorium in suspended silence”
Recent & Upcoming Highlights
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
Dortmunder Philharmoniker
Düsseldorfer Symphoniker
hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt
Minnesota Orchestra
National Symphony Orchestra, Washington
New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra
Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne
Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra
Tonkünstler-Orchester
Video
Biography
Wolff currently serves as Chief Conductor of the Belgian National Orchestra (2017-present). Other positions held during the course of his illustrious career have included Principal Conductor of the HR-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt (1997-2006), Principal Conductor & Music Director of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (1998-2000), Music Director of Grant Park Music Festival Chicago (1994-1997), and Music Director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra (1986-1993). He maintains a close working relationship with these institutions – touring Europe and the Far East, and appearing at the Salzburg Festival with HR-Sinfonieorchester, and recording more than 20 discs, as well as touring extensively, with the SPCO.
Read MoreBorn in Paris to American parents, Wolff spent his early years in London and Washington DC, studying piano with Leon Fleisher, and composition with George Crumb. After graduating from Harvard, Wolff won a fellowship to study in Paris – undertaking studies in conducting with Charles Bruck, and in composition with Olivier Messiaen. He then returned to the United States to continue piano studies with Fleisher at the Peabody Institute, before beginning his professional conducting career in 1979 – as Associate Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra under Mstislav Rostropovich.
Since then, as a guest conductor Wolff has gone on to appear with all the major American orchestras, including the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. He is also works frequently at such summer festivals as Aspen, Ravinia, and Tanglewood. Wolff is also in high demand throughout Europe, working regularly with such leading orchestras as the Czech Philarmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus, London Symphony, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre National de Lyon, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks.
Recent and forthcoming highlights include performances with the Atlanta Symphony, Dortmund Philharmoniker, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, the Minnesota Orchestra, Netherlands Philharmonic, New Japan Philharmonic, NSO Washington, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, Seoul Philharmonic, and the Tonkünstler-Orchester.
Wolff’s discography is vast, and includes a complete set of Beethoven symphonies (with the HR-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt), music from the Baroque to the present days (with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra). A champion of contemporary works, Wolff has recorded the music of such leading composers as John Corigliano, Brett Dean, John Harbison, Aaron Jay Kernis and Mark-Anthony Turnage. Artists with whom he has recorded include such luminaries as Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, Jennifer Larmore, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet, as well as Jazz guitarist John Scofeld.
In addition to his performance career, Hugh Wolff is passionate about passing knowledge on to the leading lights of the next generation. As such, he holds the ‘Stanford and Norma Jean Calderwood Director of Orchestras’ Chair at the New England Conservatory, Boston, where he is in charge of the four orchestras and teaches graduate students the art of orchestral conducting.
News
Hugh Wolff & Belgian National Orchestra
24 January 2021 marks Hugh Wolff’s first concert back with the Belgian National Orchestra since...
Hugh Wolff conducts in Boston
On 31 October 2020 Hugh Wolff conducts the NEC Orchestra in a programme of Julius Eastman,...
Hugh Wolff returns to Boston
On 3 October 2020, Hugh Wolff returns to the concert stage with the Orchestra of the New England...
Reviews
“From the beginning of Beethoven’s overture to his ballet The Creatures of Prometheus, the vital spirit and basis of Wolff’s interpretation could be keenly felt through sharp sonic contrasts. And in Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony – as Wolff interpreted it – strongly nuanced expressions and tempi, between the idyllic and the stormiest of passages, helped paint the programmatic pulse of the music.”
“In The Creatures of Prometheus Overture and the Pastoral 6th Symphony, Wolff confirms his individual approach to Beethoven.”
“Mr. Wolff and his young charges closed the concert with a bang-up performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 6. The Presto finale, with the young players reveling in the thrill of collective virtuosity, was sheer joy.”
“[The] gifted and important American conductor…led a splendid program with playing to match by the CSO…Conducting without a score (as he did the Haydn), Wolff found all the complexity in Shostakovich’s score, from the fife-and-drum-like Allegro – a caricature of the victorious Stalin (kudos to piccoloist Joan Voorhees) – to the sorrowful slow movement.”
“Wolff’s Shostakovich 10 was powerful, three-dimensional and devastating, and the Atlanta Symphony blossomed by his approach. Much of the opening movement builds to an unbearable tension. Wolff paced it tautly and meaningfully, with understated authority. When the music finally crossed that emotional threshold and plummeted into some dark netherworld of a broken psyche, Wolff did not, would not, relent… Credit Wolff with delivering the crucial essence of a harrowing masterpiece of the 20th century.”
“From the first performance of the complete work in 1935… [Walton Symphony No.1] gained a reputation for being devilishly difficult due to its complex rhythms, intricate textures and taut, constantly evolving themes. Hugh Wolff and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra triumphantly surmounted its challenges with a gripping and inspirational interpretation…. Wolff’s textural clarity unravelled the densely interwoven lines to reveal a wealth of detail… shrewdly combined with expressive freedom and spontaneity… Every time he visits Sydney, Wolff gives performances that stimulate and excite in equal measure. I hope we’ll see him again.”
“Wolff stays always at the heart of the music; it was a pleasure to hear music so ably shaped… Wolff kept a brisk but unobtrusive pace, barely pausing between movements yet never leaving any question where in the piece one was; the longest rest came in the moments before the final coda, and so absolute was his control by then that he held the whole auditorium in suspended silence.”
Discography

In The Shadow Of War
Released February 2013 on BIS Records
Conductor: Hugh Wolff, Gábor Takács-Nagy
Composer: Ernest Bloch, Frank Bridge, Stephen Hough

Prokofiev/Haydn/Bizet : Symphonies
Released October 2011 on Apex

Beethoven: The Symphonies
Released July 2008 on Hr Musik

Dean, B.: Viola Concerto / 12 Angry Men / Intimate Decisions / Komarov's Fall
Released July 2008 on BIS

Respighi : Pini Di Roma, Fontane Di Roma, Fest Romane, Trittico, Gli Uccelli, Antiche Danze
Released July 2008 on BIS