With its over 400-year long history Wuerttemberg’s Staatsorchester Stuttgart is one of the oldest and most traditional orchestras in Germany. Every season it can be listened to and enjoyed in over 230 ballet and opera performances as well as in symphony and chamber concerts at Stuttgart’s Liederhalle. Furthermore, the orchestra has intensified its presence in the field of vocal-instrumental chamber music as part of a series of Lied concerts in collaboration with the Intl. Hugo-Wolf-Akademie.

With the so-called pillow concerts for young visitors aged 3 to 6 as well as the mentoring programme for the Landesjugendorchester Baden-Württemberg, the musicians show their commitment towards a young audience and the musical next generation. In 2002 the Staatsorchester was voted »Orchestra of the Year« by the magazine Opernwelt.

Over the past decades star conductors like Carlos Kleiber, Dennis Russell Davies, Lothar Zagrosek and Manfred Honeck have influenced the orchestra as Musical Directors and Kapellmeister and are thus amongst the well-known line-up of conductors who led the Staatsorchester through the first half of the 20th century.

In addition, the Orchestra has always maintained good and intensive relationships with important guest conductors, i.e. Richard Strauss, Ernest Ansermet, Karl Böhm, John Barbirolli and Georg Solti. The list of famous soloist names ranges from Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms to Claudio Arrau and David Oistrach right up to Keith Jarrett, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Gidon Kremer and the Arditti Quartet. With the beginning of the 2018/19 season, Cornelius Meister took over as General Music Director.

Early on already, the Staatsorchester transposed the findings of historic performance practice into its operatic productions. The stylistic brilliance of the Staatsorchester is not least expressed in a long list of key performances of contemporary music, including Luigi Nono’s Al gran sole carico d’amore and Helmut Lachenmann’s Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern. This innovative tradition reaches right back into the 19th century: In addition to the German premiere of Verdi’s Falstaff in Stuttgart it was one of the first orchestras in Germany to stage its own production of the entire Ring cycle – Der Ring des Nibelungen. The tradition carried on with the premiere of Ariadne auf Naxos under Richard Strauss in 1912, the premieres of Paul Hindemith’s one-act pieces in 1921 and the German premiere of Hindemith’s opera Mathis der Maler. Premieres of past decades include works by Carl Orff, Krzysztof Penderecki, Philip Glass, Hans Zender, Rolf Riehm, Wolfgang Rihm, Adriana Hölszky, Gérard Pesson and Hans Thomalla.